Between the Shadow and the Soul
by Nyx Underwood
Summary: "I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where." On the night of The Truce, Chuck is in an accident that wipes out his memory of the last three years. What would happen if pilot-era Chuck wakes up to a Brave New World? Post 4x06, C/B, AU.
1. Chapter 1: Without Knowing How

A/N: One of the most familiar tropes in the fandom seems to be the old "Blair gets in an accident and loses her memory" gambit. So, it occurred to me to try the same story, but with Chuck being the one who loses all memory of the last few years. Spoilers up to 4x06 (Easy J) – although Chuck may not be aware of these! I apologise for any medical inaccuracies. This is a short chapter just to test out the story and see how it is received before committing.

**_Between the Shadow and the Soul_**

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter One: **Without Knowing How, Or When, Or From Where

_I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,_

_Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off._

_I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,_

_In secret, between the shadow and the soul._

_I love you as the plant that never blooms_

_But carries in itself the light of the hidden flowers; _

_Thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance _

_Risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body._

_I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where._

_I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;_

_So I love you because I know no other way_

_Than this: where _I _does not exist, nor_ you_,_

_So close that your hand on my chest is my hand,_

_So close that your eyes close as I fall asleep_

- Pablo Neruda, "XVII"

* * *

_15 November, 2010 (10:50 PM)_

_Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City _

Patient's Name: Charles Bartholomew Bass

Admitted By: Donald Johnson (Emergency Services)

Notes: _Patient admitted to the Emergency Department of this Hospital by the Donald Johnson (EMT). Reported hit-and-run resulting in substantial tears to the rotor cuff as well as brain trauma. Previous gunshot wound inflamed and infected. MRI indicates possible lesions on the hippocampus, raising concerns over possible implications for systems-level memory consolidation. Family has been contacted. _

* * *

_18 November, 2010 (4:13 PM)_

The world exploded and then there was blackness. But, from the darkness, a new world was born.

The smells came first - an unnaturally clean smell, with just a hint of alcohol.

Then, an experimental wriggle of the toe. With that tiny movement, a wave of self-awareness comes upon the man whose eyes refuse to open. He does not feel _right_. But, he knows this: he is a person. His name is Charles.

There is a certain process that must be followed, to emerge from the blackness that comes after a world ends. It takes a sudden assault of smells and a slight movement to remind the brain that it is lodged in a body. Next, the muffled sound of conversation reaches his ears, but it is not possible, yet to understand the content.

"I never thought this day would come; I'm actually _sick_ of eating junk food."

"I'll alert the newspapers," a woman says, her voice as light as the air. Charles can hear her, distantly, and knows that she is a friend.

"I'm just saying. I used to love junk food. This is like breaking up with someone."

"I'll try not to take that personally."

"No one's forcing you to stay, Nate," says a new female voice. It is darker than the one that spoke before; it is heavy with exhaustion. "I don't need you guys to keep my company."

"We're keeping Chuck's company," the man's voice responds. "You're just an added bonus."

"But," the first woman says hesitantly, her voice needling and tempting against the slow _beep, beep, beep_ that punctuates their words. "You know, B, it might be a good idea for you to go home for a few hours."

"I'm fine."

There is a pause as all four of them listen to the steady beeping of the strange metronome that Charles can't quite make sense of.

"Serena and I can stay here," the man says, as if this were a speech that he had rehearsed earlier. "We'll call you if anything changes."

"You don't need to call me, Nate," the woman responds tightly. "Because I'm not leaving."

Nate. The name evokes the smell of grass and the feeling of a hand squeezing a shoulder in comfort. In the pooling darkness behind Charles' eyes, he longs to reach out to the sound of this voice; there is safety and understanding and comfort. He longs to move his head, slightly, to feel the light of these feelings on his face. But, he cannot control his movements.

"You look tired. Ow – _Serena! _ What are you, twelve years old? Why did you kick me?"

Serena and Nate. He had known both of them, backs when he was not trapped in this impenetrable darkness. They had passed dewy days together in the outside world. And now, their voices reached towards him and he tried to clasp their hands. If he can just open his eyes, then maybe Serena and Nate would take him by the arm and lead him back to daylight.

_Open your eyes. Open your eyes. Openyoureyes. Openyoureyes._

A dull throbbing forms in the back of Charles' mind as a new sensation awakens within him: pain. The pain radiates from his shoulder and travels into his chest.

"What Nate _meant_ to say," Serena says primly. "Is that you haven't left this hospital for days."

"We're worried about you, Blair."

Blair.

Somewhere in the dark well he struggles to escape from, he knows that he is in a bed, and that the sting in his arm is a needle. But, for some incomprehensible reason, the single shaft of light that reaches him is a name.

Blair.

The steady _beep-beep-beep_ increases in tempo and there is a sudden flurry of movement in the dark space around Charles' bed.

"What the hell is going on?" Nate asks, fearfully.

"Get a nurse," Blair snaps.

Charles can feel a warm hand pressed against his forehead.

"Are you eavesdropping on us, Chuck Bass?" Blair says, her voice almost gentle.

The feeling of the hand calms him, and the strange beeping returns to a steady pace. He would like to thank her. He makes a fist and bangs on the walls of the well, but he makes no sound.

The blackness overcomes him once more. It comes over him hard and covers him entirely.

_

* * *

19 November, 2010_ _(8:30AM)_

Just an hour ago, Blair Waldorf had seen Chuck stir in his sleep.

Both Serena and Lily were there to assure her that it was not just her imagination and she resented them and appreciated them in equal measure. Quite apart from the horror of discovering that he had stepped off the curb outside her house and into on-coming traffic, she had found out from Lily, hours after the event. When she arrived at the hospital, Serena, Eric and even Rufus were already present. She had lost another moment and it felt like robbery – it felt, the way she had felt when she learned that it was Eva who had nursed him back to health after his gunshot wound.

Just hours earlier, they had shaken hands and agreed to write their names in ink at the bottom the page on which their story ended. She had closed the door on him and bade farewell to the entire, sorry chapter, aware that while the war may have ended, she was the only casualty.

But, from the moment she entered this cold, sterile hospital, she found it impossible to leave. She was drawn to his fading light like some vulnerable creature with dust on its wings. That was what it felt like to love Chuck Bass.

"I'm glad that you're here for him," Lily had said to her over his unconscious form. Blair had looked at her – _really_ looked at her – and for once had seen her clearly. She may have been the closest thing that Chuck had to family, but they always observed a comfortable distance.[1] She didn't understand, she could never really understand what it was to truly know Chuck Bass, to know that there was quite simply nothing that he wouldn't do. His words, reflected back at her: No Limits.

She didn't know, really, what brought her to this place. When he opened his eyes, they would still be over: this entire, sticky mess between them would bind them forever, certainly, but compromise seemed impossible. The time for fighting was over; now it was time to gather together what was left.

Perhaps she stayed by his bedside because he looked the way she felt: wrung out, exhausted, and absent from the world.

"I don't know how you do it," Serena said to her, sitting in one of the plastic chairs in a high-necked black dress that ended somewhere halfway down her thighs. Serena Van Der Woodsen just didn't belong in hospitals. Both she and Nate, who seemed to have called a tentative accord for the occasion, squirmed in their seats, as if eager to escape. For her part, Blair was totally still, waiting for a cue from the immobile man who had taken her world, shaken it violently, and discarded it.

"How I do what?"

"How you always come through for us, no matter what," Serena said fondly.

"I'm not here for anyone else," Blair said flatly. "I'm just waiting."

"What are you waiting for?"

"The end. Whatever form it takes."

Serena's eyebrows formed a thin line in the centre of her forehead as she examined Blair's face. Gone was the determination and haughtiness of before Chuck's various double-crosses, replaced by hard listlessness. "Please don't say that, B. Don't talk like something's ending."

"Something is."

"But things are getting better," Serena reasoned. "You and Chuck agreed to a truce. The petty games are over. You can move on."

"Yes," Blair said, her eyes still settled on his face – the only point of movement in his entire being was in the faint fluttering of his eyelids, pale and translucent. "But he has to let me go, first."

"You _did_ let you go, B."

She tilted her head, as if examining a specimen with a scientific eye. Finally, she offered her old friend a half-smile. "He invoked a caveat. I told him that I would want to know if he were really hurt. So he got really hurt." Blair allowed her tired head to come to rest on the wall behind her head. "He's an evil genius."

"Chuck didn't plan for this to happen."

"Chuck plans everything," she whispered, reaching forward as if to touch his hair, before stopping herself just in time. When her small white hands came to rest in her lap, Serena fancied that she might burst into tears if she stayed for a moment longer.

Gathering her purse, she offered Blair a watery smile. "I'm going to go walk with Eric to school. He hasn't been going with…everything that's going on."

"Okay."

Serena paused before she left, resting one hand on the doorframe and shaking her head at the intense look of focus on Blair's face: as if this were a diabolical plan that she had yet to figure out. Even the sight of Chuck in a hospital gown couldn't convince her that this whole thing was real. "He didn't plan this, Blair. And there was nothing you could have done."

"I'm sure you're right, S," Blair said unconvincingly, not tearing her eyes away from his face.

"Oh, and B?" Serena said, worrying her lip with her teeth. "Happy Birthday."

"Thanks," Blair responded without looking up.

Then, it was just Chuck and Blair. Or whoever they were nowadays.

Serena was probably right. There was no way he could have planned this. There would be no leaping up from the hospital bed to laugh at her by his bedside. There was nothing, really, apart from the carefully regulated breathing that told her he was still alive. Serena was right; she was being paranoid.

But, then, Serena had never loved Chuck Bass – not the way that Blair had. No one had loved him the way she had. She had loved him hard, loved him rotten, she had lost herself entirely in him.

And then, she had woken up the day after – as if at the end of long fight – and had found that life was quiet and manageable without him. With Chuck, it had seemed as if the world were vast and terrifying: in Technicolor with just a hint of violence. Without Chuck, there were polite smiles and small talk in the library. But, she was in control of every second of her quiet, well-polished days. She sat in class and wrote the same detailed notes she had always carefully transcribed.

But, she half-expected the people around her to look at her strangely, to point and gasp and gossip.

She would stand in front of the mirror for hours, examining herself. This was nothing new. But, for once, it wasn't her figure that she was trying to assess.

She was searching her skin, trying to find the mark he had left on her.

_

* * *

21 November, 2010 (9:14PM)_

There seem to be bandages and ointments on his skin. But, beyond the feeling of coolness and itching, he can hear a breath next to his ear. It tells him secrets, which he forgets.

"I was lying when I said I could never forgive you," she whispers to the night. "And that's what terrifies me."

That night, she sings to him, and her voice is like wind chimes, in stark contrast to the sounds of machines. But, after a while she stops singing and he drifts away from her until he falls asleep with a hunger for it.[2]

_

* * *

22 November, 2010 (11:32AM)_

"Those doctors give me the creeps," Nate commented idly, offering Blair a chip and shrugging when she shook her head.

"They don't know what to make of all of us," Blair said, tightening her cardigan around her middle and strolling to the window, looking out at the street below and wondering whether the people who walked on the streets downstairs knew how uncomplicated their lives were. "It's usually just the family that get told this sort of thing. They're not used to playing to an audience."

"We _are_ family."

Blair glanced at Nate, noting his wide blue eyes and the determined nod of his head. He never looked directly at Chuck; it was easier to pretend that everything was alright when you didn't see evidence to the contrary right before your eyes.

"You know that's not true, Nate," she said, sadly.

He sighed, stretching his long, athletic legs straight out in front of him. "I know things have been really screwed up recently."

"You have a real gift for understatement."

Nate glanced down, before peering at her through his eyelashes. "You've changed," he said shyly.

Her crossed arms were a shield. "How have I changed?"

"You're nicer to Dan," Nate said with a slight grin, gratified when Blair let out a low chuckle. "But mainly…you're just…sadder."

Her heart clenched slightly, and she turned back to the window, unaware that the light of the outside cast shadows on her face. "I'm not sad, Nate."

"Yeah. But you are."

"I'm not sad," she insisted. "I'm just really tired."

Nate nodded without prying. He was so different to Chuck in that way; he never needed to dig deeper, deeper – until he hit the one secret that proved to him that everyone was a liar, just like him.

She should know; she was a liar, too.

_

* * *

23 November, 2010 (3:21PM)_

"He'll wake up when he's ready, B. No one could ever rush Chuck Bass."

"No one can tell Chuck Bass to do anything he didn't want to do. He's probably just torturing us on purpose."

There is a pause.

"I wonder if this what he looked like," Blair says, breaking the silence. "When he was shot and Eva looked after him. I wonder if he was still like this – if he looked like he was dead."

"He's going to be fine, B." Serena's voice sounds strange, as if she'd said this phrase so many times that it was losing its sincerity.

"I wish people would stop saying that. There's nothing _fine_ about this. They're talking about brain damage, you know. I mean, you realize that even if he wakes up…"

"Blair," Serena interrupts. "You need to calm down."

"No. You need to open your eyes."

There is a pause.

"You know," Serena says. "I almost expected that to work."

"I wasn't talking to him."

"Okay. Whatever you say."

None of it makes sense to him and he longs for the silence that comes when it was just him and the voice that belonged to Blair. But two things he knows, through the fog and dark: he looks like he was dead, and his name is Chuck Bass.

Then even these dissolve, and the darkness takes him in hand once more.

_

* * *

23 November, 2010 (11:01AM)_

She had wondered many times what she would do when those familiar brown eyes met hers again. Mostly, she wanted to do the one thing that she had failed to do that night, when they had shaken hands. Lovers do not part with a handshake, and the mere fact that they had tried to do so insulted her, insulted both of them.

Lovers end with a slap or a kiss.

When he opened his eyes, she would either slap him or kiss him. Only time would tell which one she chose.

Or maybe she could do both.

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (2:57PM)_

There was something different about that day. He knew it immediately, when once more his mind slipped into its rightful place in his body. He knew that today was an auspicious day, as clearly as he knew that his name was Chuck Bass, and that only his father called him Charles.

It was time to wake up. To wake up _properly_.

He didn't want to rush the process. He started with the now familiar toe wiggle. Then, he tensed his arm, to feel the familiar swoop of sickness that came when he realized that there was a foreign object lodged in it. He swallowed once, twice.

Then, with the exultation of a blind man who can see for the first time, Chuck Bass opened his eyes.

The room came to him in snatches. There were chairs arranged in an arch around his bed, as if scores of people had come to see him. There were machines all around him, and a bland watercolour painting graced the wall opposite his bed.

_How quaint,_ he thought lazily.

He was in a rather dreary hospital bed. But, at first sight, even it's neat corners and rough sheets seemed beautiful to him in the afternoon sun. His head may have hurt like hell, and his shoulder may have felt like there were pins lodged in it, but the sight of crisp white sheets was enough to make him exult in the fact he had conquered the darkness.

There was still a hint of grey about the corners of his vision, but he was starting to feel like himself again, cringing at the cheap fabric that rubbed against his chest and the greasy feeling of his unwashed hair. He would need to get some proper care, now that he was awake.

But, this thought made him frown. Why was he here? Experimentally, he tensed his muscles, taking stock of the damage. With this movement, came a new wave of pains; his ankle hurt and his chest felt as if it had a tight band around it.

Things were clearing in his mind; he seemed to recall a strange pain in his stomach. It was burning. He was leaving somewhere, and he felt as if his chest might burst. He had just done something important, but it made his chest feel like he was going to die. His eyes had been blurring as he stepped off the curb.

Then came the explosion.

But why had he been there? What had he been doing? Why had he felt as if at any moment, his heart might stop beating?

Questions blossomed into new questions.

The important thing was that his eyes were open, and judging by the beeping of the heart monitor, his heart was still performing its primary function.

_It's only function,_ he thought wryly.

His hand was turning numb, he realized. It was only when he started to flex his wrist that he noticed a strange sight. There, next to his right hand, was a head-full of brown curls.

He would have known her anywhere; he had grown up tugging on those curls and watching them spring back to their rightful place. He had seen them arranged behind a headband, and he had seen one come loose of an elegant chignon. But for the life of him, he couldn't make sense of the sight.

Blair Waldorf's face was buried in his hospital sheets, and her hand was clasped in his.

It took longer than it should have for these thoughts to connect, and the moment that they did, he snatched his hand away on an impulse. The movement, however, caused Blair's head to whip up.

Her face was streaked with tears. Surely, she wasn't crying over him? He noticed, suddenly, that she wasn't wearing any make-up. This sight in itself was enough to throw him; in all the years he had known Blair, he had never seen her without immaculate make-up. The only time she had seen him dissolve into tears was when Serena and her father had left. He had sat with her for hours, uncertain about how to comfort her – certain that his hand would be swat away if he tried to stroke her back, the way Nate always did.

"Chuck?" she asked, as if she scarcely believed it.

He waited for a witty response to form in his brain, but it was impossible through the dull cotton that seemed to have lodged there.

"As you live and breathe," he responded, although his dry voice cracked slightly over the first syllable, disappearing entirely before he could complete the sentence.

He was about to perform the Herculean task of forming a word once more, when suddenly, Blair's face dissolved into tears.

"You're awake," she said, her voice wavering with tears

Chuck gave her an alarmed look, his brain still struggling to accommodate the fact that her tears and his condition were related. "Waldorf - "

"No, don't talk," she said, wiping at her face and pressing a button to summon one of the nurses. "Just…don't say anything. Don't remind me that I'm mad at you. Just…"

_Why the hell is she mad at me?_ Chuck wondered.

She stood, turning her back to him and pressing a hand to her mouth. When she turned around to look at him. The expression on her face was impossible to decode and he found himself captivated by the conflicting emotions that appeared and disappeared in constantly rearranging patterns. He had never seen Blair quite so undone as she was now.

"Chuck," she said in a voice that he didn't recognize. Then, she stepped towards his bed-side, where he lay not wanting to move until he made sense of the scene and could select an appropriate response.

Finally, though, the expression on her face forced him to ask the only question that would account for her strange reaction to him. "Am I dying or something?" he rasped, hating the sound of his own weak voice.

"Shut up, Chuck," she said in that same husky voice, frowning deeply at him.

Her face, as she looked down at him was the same face that he had saw each day at school, but she had never looked at him like this, before. So, he obeyed her request that he stay silent, as if his aching throat would have allowed any other course of action.

She swallowed, hard, shaking her head in disbelief at something he couldn't quite make out. And then, with a slight tremor in her hands – _Blair Waldorf with a tremor?_ – she placed them on either side of his face. She needn't have worried about holding him still, because he couldn't have moved if he wanted to. Then, with the slow, deliberate movements of someone performing a solemn act, she kissed him, square on the lips.

For a moment, the strangeness of her lips against his eclipsed any other thought. They were soft and immediate against his dry, parched mouth. He would have liked to drink in some of her moisture; to pull her closer until her hands were his hands and together they could figure out why on earth she was kissing him like this.

But when she pulled away, she looked questioningly into his eyes, trying and failing to read the thoughts that were forming and disintegrating behind them.

There was only one thought in his head: Blair Waldorf had just kissed him. Not only had she kissed him, but she had done it as if it were the most meaningful kiss in the world. Blair Waldorf had kissed him, and the only reason that Blair did anything was either to further a scheme or to solidify the promise of her future. She was, quite possibly, the most insanely driven person that he had ever met.

That kiss, whatever it meant, was surely part of something bigger that he could not quite understand. Something was wrong. Something had changed incomprehensibly.

And Chuck Bass hated being in the dark.

Against his will, his injured hand came to his lips, as if trying to catch the kiss she had just placed there. But, when he spoke, his voice was rough. "Waldorf," he rasped, his throat aching and his lips tingling. "What the _hell_ are you doing?"

She jumped back as if his words had been a physical blow. For a moment, her face rippled as if another jag of tears were about to come upon her. But, she mastered herself and her eyes hardened. She opened her mouth to respond, but before she had the opportunity, the door to his room opened and two nurses spilled in.

"Mr. Bass. How are you feeling? Can we get you some water?"

"What's happening?" Nate asked, hurrying into the room. "I saw the nurses…and…Blair, where are you - "

"He's awake," she spat at him, before running from the room. "I'm done here."

Chuck was aware that he must have looked strange, standing stock-still with his fingers pressed to his lips. Certainly, Nate shot him a (typically) confused glance as the nurses on either side of him checked instruments and examined his bandages. But, as always seemed to be the case with Nate, kindness won out over confusion.

"Are you okay, man?" Nate asked gently.

But, Nate's voice is drowned out by the more insistent questions of the nurses. "What do you remember about the accident?"

"Nothing," he said, one hand still frozen in its position on his lips, and the other sipping water from a long, yellow straw. As he drank, his voice gained strength. "I remember everything exploding."

"There was a car accident," one of the nurses prompts him. "Do you remember where you were when it happened?"

It was like gazing at a horizon over a vast expanse of water. "I was leaving the Waldorf's house. They were having a party. I was - " as he spoke, the images he was conjuring solidified and the horizon turned into a shore line " – I was thinking about how much more interesting things would be now that Serena was back."

"Serena?" Nate asked, shaking Chuck from his reverie. "Back from where?"

Chuck glanced down at Nate's hand where it curled around the metal bar of his hospital bed. "From boarding school."

In the uneasy silence that followed, Chuck's eyes travelled up Nate's arm, noting that he was wearing a plaid shirt and that his hair was slicked back. Was it possible that Nate had grown since he had last seen him?

Nate glanced uncertainly at the nurses. One of them whispered something in an undertone, before hurrying out of the room, presumably to summon a doctor.

"Chuck," Nate said, gently. "Serena has been back from boarding school for ages. Quit joking around."

For the first time that Chuck could remember, he felt a thin sliver of fear enter his chest. "How long was I asleep?"

"Just over a week."

"That's not ages, Nathaniel," he laughed hollowly. "You just have a short attention span." But, despite his calm tone, the heart monitor's beep was becoming increasingly erratic. As they spoke, Nate's eyes consistently returned to the screen, as if it were an insight into his best friend's brain.

"Serena came back three years ago," Nate said, as if uncertain whether this was something he was allowed to divulge.

"Bullshit," Chuck said flatly. The beeping of the heart monitor increased in speed.

"Come on, man," Nate said nervously. "You know this. She came back in 2007."

Chuck shot him a calculating look. He had learned, over the years, that it was best never to demonstrate ignorance to an opponent. Nonetheless, everyone could hear the steadily increasing heart rate on the monitor.

"I see." He paused for a moment, glancing at the nurse as if he didn't want her to hear what he next said. "And what year is it now?"

Nate's knuckles were turning white on the bed-frame. "Maybe we should wait for the doctor."

"Nathaniel, I asked you to tell me what year it is."

Nate sighed, aware that no matter what he said, Chuck's heart rate continued to rise. "It's 2010."

The beeps all but blurred into one, right before he passed out.

* * *

[1] I probably don't need to point this out, but this is a line from "The Only Exception" by Paramore.

[2] This passage is based on _The English Patient _by Michael Ondaate. I have a feeling that _The English Patient_ will be pretty influential in this story.

A/N: So, that was a purely introductory chapter. Let me know if you would like me to continue. I warn you, I haven't been much of a _Gossip Girl _viewer this season, but I have set myself the challenge of trying to repair the Chuck and Blair that they have given us on television. To be honest, this will probably end up being a redemption story for Chuck, and a re-building of Blair!

Note that this is a completely different universe to the _Unbearable Lightness_ series, and completing _Lightness and Weight_ is still my number one priority. Anyway, enough from me!


	2. Chapter 2: Before You Were Mine

A/N: Wow. What a staggering response. You guys have left me speechless. I was quite nervous putting this chapter up – and I should emphasise to you that it is largely a bridging chapter. I have big plans for this story, even though I don't imagine it will be particularly long, but I did need to do this intermediate chapter before we can delve more closely into the characters and the action. I know the writing style is quite a different from _Lightness and Weight_, but I think it just suits the mood of the story more.

_Between the Shadow and the Soul_

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Two: **Before You Were Mine

_"...I'm not here yet. The thought of me doesn't occur in the ballroom with the thousand eyes, the fizzy, movie tomorrows the right walk home could bring. I knew you would dance like that. Before you were mine, your Ma stands at the close with hiding for the late one. You reckon it's worth it._

_The decade ahead of my loud, possessive yell was the best one, eh? I remember my hands in those high-heeled red shoes, relics,and now your ghost clatters toward me over George Square till I see you, clear as scent, under the tree, with its lights, and whose small bites on your neck, sweetheart?__"_

_- _Carol Ann Duffy, "Before You Were Mine"

* * *

_24 November, 2010 (4:50 PM)_

_Lenox Hill Hospital, New York City _

Patient's Name: Charles Bartholomew Bass

Admitted By: Donald Johnson (Emergency Services)

Notes: _Patient exhibited signs of confusion and disorientation upon awaking. Preliminary tests indicate that the previously identified lesions on the hippocampus, have interfered with the patient's memory consolidation. Most recent memory before injury: October, 2007. Contact neurologist to arrange CT (Ext. # 4566). _

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (5:30pm)_

Serena pressed her forehead against the glass window, watching her breath turn into fog on the slick surface. She sighed to herself, before glancing at Nate.

"I'm trying to remember what he was like," she said quietly.

"Who? Chuck?" Nate asked, shaken from his reverie.

She nodded, the top of her head still pressed against the window of Chuck's hospital room, and the rest of her body angled towards Nate. It may have been her imagination, but Nate seemed to have aged in the last hour. It must have been worry over Chuck that made his shoulders stoop and his usually vital complexion seem ashen. It reminded her why she had always carried him in a special place in her heart: he cared so simply and so sharply for the people around him. He may not have been a constantly rearranging puzzle, like Chuck, but she preferred Nate's simplicity. If you were one of the people he loved, he had your back, not matter what. He took your pain and put it own his shoulders, even if it didn't do any good.

"When my mum called me," Serena explained. "All the way over here, I kept trying to remember what it was like when we were still at school."

"It was different," Nate offered tiredly, trying to ignore the curves of her body angled against the wall. "Chuck was definitely different."

She nodded to herself. "He was such a jerk back then. But, he was fun. When I came back, I was so worried that just standing in close proximity to him would bring back my misspent youth. Like he was infectious. But you know, back then, he was so hot-headed. You never knew what he was going to do – and you could that he didn't know himself most of the time."

Nate smiled slightly. "He would have done anything. Money, pleasure and me. Those were things he told me he cared about. Although, looking back, I suppose Blair would ranked somewhere up there…maybe between money and pleasure?"

Serena snorted slightly at his attempt at humour, but then a shadow passed over her face. "He got so sad and so serious, didn't he? After Bart, with Blair – everything that happened. I guess he grew up."

Nate glanced at her, as if trying to assess whether she could handle what he next wanted to say. "Can I tell you something?"

"Of course," she offered him the ghost of a smile.

"All last year, I kept thinking that I miss the old Chuck," Nate said quietly, a note of guilt reverberating in his voice. "Because back then, that Chuck – _this_ Chuck I guess. He was my boy, you know? I haven't felt like that with him for a long time." Nate shook his head to clear it. "But I didn't want this. I mean – Jesus. He doesn't know anything, Serena. How the hell are we going to tell him what's happened in the last three years?"

Serena turned around to look through the window. "We can't lie to him. But, we can't tell him everything all at once."

Nate stood next to her, his shirt-sleeve brushing against her bare arm. It was heartening to have Serena back, while Lily consulted with the doctors. Nate had resented the ease with which Serena had flitted in and out of the hospital; it had seemed as if he and Blair were to be the only constants. The part of him that was still angry with her was not surprised. She left people so easily; her affections waned so fast. But, really, he knew that he was being unfair. At times, Nate had wondered why he sat there himself. It was becoming exhausting to be Chuck's friend: to see a face so familiar do such alien things. With each passing day, each changing persona, each stage of this unending war against Blair and his heart – each moment it seemed as if the Chuck that Nate had known – known the way he knew the freckle the back of his right hand - took another step away from all of them.

It had been too much, really, to expect Blair to reach out and tug Chuck back to them. She had always done it before, but Nate had a sneaking suspicion that this time, even she would lose her grip.

And so he had sat there, just in case Blair wavered. Because Nate knew at some esoteric level – knew in his bones – that the moment they all deserted Chuck for good, would be the moment that the Non-Judging Breakfast Club quite simply ceased to exist.

"Nate," Serena said suddenly, interrupting the companionable silence. "Where's Blair?"

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (6:54pm)_

Blair had read, somewhere, that the human brain allocates a certain square footage to those people who were significant in a person's life. It had appealed to her, to know that there was a miniscule space of her friends and family's brains that was hers alone.

It was a strange thing to find herself erased.

Serena had been here; the scent of her perfume lingered in the air. She had grasped Blair's hands and searched her face for some form of reaction to the news that Chuck appeared to have suffered damage to his memory. Blair's hands had been limp in Serena's grasp, and her voice thin.

"It doesn't matter. He's better off."

Really, what had Serena expected, speaking with such compassion and trying to tell Blair something with her eyes? There had been a time when Blair had been a poet: the thought of memory would have stirred her then, would have transported her to the sets of old movies and books. She would have been at Chuck's side and tended his bandages.

But, those dreaming days were over. Where once she had viewed her life as a captivating scene from a movie, or a rousing final number in a stage show, she now found that she had no patience for fiction. Even her courses at Columbia were cut-and-dry practicality. She had tucked her love of literature away in a box and shoved it under her bed. She had left her books at her mother's house; she couldn't even sit through a movie.

Serena had left her then, recoiled from her brittle voice and her cold hands.

Blair had always imagined that when the end finally came for her and Chuck, that it would be on her terms. She had imagined that one day she would grow tired of the disappointments, she would see him a light that changed everything – he no longer seem fearsome, but pathetic. She had planned down to the outfit, the way she would smile sympathetically and wish him good day.

The Bass-tard couldn't even let her have that.

It had taken one impact to rattle her memory out of his brain. The look on his face when she had given him that humiliating kiss: he had been so shocked, so blindsided. She had known then, even through her anger and embarrassment, that something was wrong.

It was fitting, really. She had told him that she loved him, and he had told her it was her problem. She called herself his family, and he sold her to his uncle. She promised to stand by him through anything, and so he degraded her until her promise to make him strong because a testament to her own weakness. He was the master at finding the small print of every promise she made to him. This was no different; they agreed to move forward, so he deleted their past.

A small, irrational part of her blamed him for it. If it had been her lying in hospital, there would have been some justice to it. To look at him and see only a friend: to see the world as a thing to conquer. In many ways, things had been better for her three years ago. She had been a different person. And while she knew that she'd matured, a part of her would envy the qualities she'd had at sixteen: that single-minded determination, the conviction that things _must_ work out to plan because she wanted them to so badly.

It was unfair of him to free himself of the memory of them. Glancing in her mirror, Blair wondered what he would see when he looked at her now. Probably, he'd see the uptight killjoy that always stole Nate away from him.

Blair found herself examining herself, not for the mark Chuck had left, but for some sign that the old Blair was in there somewhere.

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (7:00pm)_

The transition from unconsciousness to wakefulness came easily, without any resistance. He was dreaming of the low light of dusk making autumn leaves look like they were on fire. A woman next to him laughed, and then the sound of that song that had reached him during his entrapment inside his mind could be heard. He didn't see her face, as she hurried onwards, to where the leaves were falling and slight gusts of wind caused the leaves to take flight.

"Go ahead," he heard himself saying.

She laughed and twirled and he wondered why he couldn't see her face. "I'm not going without you," she called with a hint of a challenge in her voice.

He lowered his head at that, before turning on his heel and walking away from the light and laughter and the smell of autumn. The wide expanse of inky darkness spread out before him, and he found that it wasn't so bad, disappearing entirely. Although when the sound of her singing finally faded, he felt an indescribable loss.

With deliberate slowness, he opened his eyes. For a moment, Chuck's vision blurred at the sight of the drab walls and pale, inoffensive colours of his surroundings. He had never been one for drabness; he found it hard to relax or take quiet moments to himself. Always, the steady propulsion of doing whatever the hell he liked would take him away into the night, into the arms of a strange woman in a sparkly dress, or into the lights that turn the night into a carnival.

But, he had never really known light to bend the way it had in his dream: to meander through thick leaves and land on the ground in visible shafts. It was a different quality of light, far from the colours that remembered or the fluorescent artificiality he was faced with now. It was real and joyful, and it scared the hell out him. Chuck Bass didn't spend days in the park with faceless brunettes, who wouldn't leave without him. Nor had he ever been visited by quite such a vivid dream. In some ways, it seemed more real than the sight that met him now – the sight of his own feet covered by a white sheet. It was as if real life and dreaming had become inverted.

No matter what Nate had said before he had fallen once more into the tempting darkness, he remembered so clearly what it had been like before the accident: the highs of the night giving way to the lows in the morning. This was what his life was. It was where he belonged. And suddenly, he found himself in this inoffensive room, with a lingering sense of disorientation, as if he wasn't quite himself.

Was it possible that he _wasn't _quite himself?

But then, he heard a welcome voice: a point of movement in the still wasteland of the hospital room.

"Hey man," Nate said cheerfully. "You fainted for a bit, there."

The grey hospital light was easy to wake up to, but it served only to accentuate the golden glow of Nate's painful good health. Chuck fought the urge to roll his eyes at the sight of him, sitting so uncomfortably straight in the plastic chair. Despite his relief at seeing Nate, he still lay to the periphery, obscured by the lingering mournfulness of a rather insubstantial dream. Focusing on Nate, Chuck felt slightly more centred. If Nate were here, then he knew he was in the right place.

"I didn't faint," Chuck responded archly, discomforted by the weakness of his voice and the way it seemed to drop onto the ground between them instead of carrying to Nate's ears. Nate didn't seem to notice; he was grinning at Chuck, as if seeing him awake filled him with more happiness then he could really express. Chuck felt stronger, suddenly. "I passed out after receiving some rather upsetting news."

"Isn't passing out just a different way of saying 'fainted'?"

Chuck lifted himself up on one elbow, grimacing at the feeling that emanated from his other shoulder. "Fainting lacks a certain manliness."

"This from the man who wears silk pyjamas."

Chuck offered Nate an elegant shrug of his shoulders. "I don't like the chafe."

For a moment, Nate and Chuck held each other's eyes before they burst out laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of the situation.

"I've missed this," Nate said, taking a deep breath and wiping his eyes. "You've been acting so weird lately…"

"Lately as in _lately_, or lately as in the future?" Chuck asked with an uncertain half-smile.

An uneasy silence fell between them as Nate caught himself. Chuck would never have admitted how relieved he was to see Nate was still by his bedside. Those fleeting moments of consciousness had been so confusing, with the slowly unfolding revelation that Chuck had no earthly idea what was going on.

Nate sighed heavily, slumping back in his chair. Rubbing his eyes, Chuck noticed more details that had alluded him during their brief encounter hours earlier: a shoulder bag lay in the corner, with the corner of a thick textbook just visible. There was also a messy sports bag carelessly thrown under the bedside table. Instead of the familiar St Jude's lacrosse colours, Chuck noted that Nate's sports clothes were a vivid blue colour.

"I don't know what I should say, man," Nate said, casting a glance towards the glass pane in the centre of Chuck's hospital room. There, outside the glass, a blonde woman was engaged in an involved conversation with a frowning man with a high forehead - undoubtedly the doctor.

"What is Serena's mom doing here?" Chuck asked idly, picking at his sheets. "Please tell me that she and I are having a sordid affair."

Nate opened his mouth as if to speak, but then thought better of it. "Lily's just talking to the doctors."

"I hadn't noticed," Chuck responded sarcastically, examining his nails.

"She'll be glad to see that you're awake."

Chuck frowned at him. "I think she'll probably be pretty indifferent to the fact I'm awake, but I like your enthusiasm."

Nate frowned slightly, before his expression gave way to something distasteful and insulting: sympathy. "You really don't remember…anything…do you?"

Chuck pulled himself up, so that his back was straight and his chin was raised. "I remember a few things, Nathaniel. For example, I remember the first time I smoke pot of an afternoon, the first time my au pair blew me, and the time I blackmailed Justin Montgomery out of two-thirds of his quarterly trust fund." Chuck's eyes narrowed. "And then there are the precious memories of my friends. In particular, the sight of Serena deflowering you on a barstool."

For a moment, Chuck examined Nate's face – looking for some sign of shock at the disclosure that Chuck knew about the reason Serena had gone to boarding school. There was nothing but irritation and empathy in equal measure, and Chuck found himself closing his eyes, as if against a strong glare.

"Judging by the expression on your face, you already knew that I knew that."

With his eyes closed, he felt Nate's hand reach out and squeeze his own. It was an awkward gesture – one that Chuck had never known Nate to perform – and he was relieved that his eyes were closed, because at that moment they were stinging. It took a few moments to collect himself, but even when he opened his eyes, he couldn't quite meet Nate's eyes. He was afraid, suddenly, that he would notice some profound change in Nate's character: something that would confirm for him once and for all that it really was 2010, even if for him that meant three years were simply cancelled out. It a mercy, really when Nate changed the subject.

"That first nurse who came in here was pretty hot, don't you think?" Nate commented – as peace offering.

"She had the high forehead of a Neanderthal," Chuck mused. "Which usually suggests that she's both easy and slow."

"What is wrong with you?" Nate asked, shaking his head.

"I speak the truth, and you should probably write down everything I say," Chuck said, smirking nonchalantly, before examining the tube that had been inserted into his wrists. "Honestly, Nathaniel. Sometimes I wonder about you. Where were you when they were handing out brains?"

"Gee, Chuck," Nate said acidly, pretending that the re-emergence of their banter wasn't warming his heart slightly. "I accidentally got in line for a 'shred of moral decency' instead."[1]

Chuck's face fell and he sank down on his pillow, and Nate immediately leaned in looking for the button that could be used to summon said hot nurses. "What's the matter, man? Are you okay?"

"You're not bullshitting me, are you?" Chuck asked faintly, laying stricken eyes on Nate's face. "It really is 2010, isn't it?"

"Yeah," Nate said gently.

"It just sank in, you know?" Chuck said, offering a theatrical sigh. "Because there is just no way in hell that the Nathaniel I know is capable of coming up with a come back like that unless he has a three year head start."

There was beat of silence.

"Oh you are dead, now," Nate said, half-laughing and half-glaring at his old friend.

Chuck raised his uninjured hand, as if warding off Nate's fake blows. "I'm sorry, man. But, I guess this just shows that while you were in line getting your 'moral decency', I was getting a quick wit, chiselled features, and great fashion sense." Despite his light tone, he glanced once more towards Lily Van Der Woodsen. "You really aren't going to tell me what the deal is with Lily, are you?"

Nate bit his lip, settling back in his chair. He looked around the room, as if searching for something to talk about. "So what happened with you and Blair? She looked pretty upset."

_Blair._

It was too hot in this room. And something was wrong with his stomach. Chuck pulled at his hospital gown, wondering whether it was tangled in such a way to make his throat feel so constricted. His shoulder hurt and he had just been in an accident. It was just inconsiderate of Nate to keep talking at him about irrelevant issues when he was all but on his death-bed.

"Waldorf is always upset about something," Chuck said dismissively, fighting the urge to press his hand once more to have traitorous lips, which even now flared with the recollection of the unexpected kiss. "I'm sure she'll be back to normal in no after a few hours of you guys counting each other's eyelashes and exchanging Eskimo kisses."

"Oh man," Nate said, running his hands through his hair and pressing his palms to his eyes. "I don't even know where to begin with this one." He sighed, before allowing a distracted, mournful smile to appear on his face. "You know, I actually thought that you might remember…just…I don't know. It's stupid. I just thought that somehow you'd remember her. I mean, I know it doesn't work that way, but…"

But precisely what didn't work that way, Chuck wasn't to find out that evening. When the door rattled open and Lily Van Der Woodsen walked in, a line etched in her forehead and her eyes glassy and tearing, Chuck realized that in his light conversation with Nate, he had only scratched the surface of what he had missed.

"Charles," she said, as if he had just entered one of her lavish parties.

"Mrs. Van Der Woodsen," he said, with a formal nod and what he hoped was a reasonable imitation of his usual charming smile.

But, for some reason, she faltered at that. It seemed as if this was the way it was going to be for now: that he would make those tiny, inadvertent slip-ups that so carelessly and effortlessly ruffled, hurt or perplexed those around him. He was to be a walking reminder of a past that didn't exist for them anymore.

"Mrs. Humphrey," a blonde, petite nurse with a rather pinched face said, craning her neck around the artificially white doorframe. "We'll be congregating in the conference room across the hall while Mr. Bass undergoes some tests in the Neurology wing."

"Mrs. Humphrey," Chuck said, offering her a bored smile as the brisk nurse continued on her rounds. "Well then, I believe congratulations are in order. Who is the lucky man?"

"There will be plenty of time to catch up," she said, as if it pained her slightly. "You should just call me Lily."

He nodded at that – a businesslike, impersonal nod – and refrained from commenting when the nurses helped him into a wheelchair and propelled him towards the large, smooth CT machine that would give the doctors an insight into the goings-on of his brain.

"We'll be right outside," Lily said reassuringly, as he climbed painfully onto the metal slab. For a moment, Chuck felt a strange sense of déjà vu. It was probably nothing more than an association drawn from television shows, where dead bodies were dispassionately spread out on metal tables and covered with white sheets. The families would usually come to claim them: a scene of weeping and desolation that Chuck had never really considered. Even now, his father was notably absent from the hospital.

At least that meant things hadn't changed too much over the last few years.

He glanced over his shoulder, seeing Lily and Nate with glum faces, exchanging quiet words that he could not make out. It was a relief, in some ways, to be alone in a room this way. It was easier when he couldn't see the interplay of emotions on Nate's face, as if he were biting back words that would illuminate at least a sliver of what Chuck's life consisted of these days. It was easier than making sense of Lily's worried frown, and the strange way that the doctor's deferred to her.

It was easier than recollecting the raw, tearful kiss that Blair Waldorf had given him: unprovoked, out of sheer relief at his awakening.

These familiar faces were troubling enough. When he left the hospital, who knew what he would see? Who knew what each of those dumb, blank faces of the crowds passing by would know about him? What would the substance of his days be? What was his ATM number these days? Where was his telephone, with its reliable list of underbelly contacts?

"Just try to lie still," a crackling voice ordered him over a loud-speaker.

It was only when he was lying horizontal in the sterile tube, with harsh white lights, that he allowed the slow-blooming horror at the situation overtake him. Three years. Three years of his life had disappeared. Three years of breathing, eating, drinking, screwing, scheming, hating, caring, and, quite simply, _living_ had disappeared like passing thought, like the dates of a forgotten historical figure, like a scream in a deserted forest.

For someone who had collected secrets like marbles, with the only object being the lazy, malevolent game he played with people's lives, he found himself ironically out of the loop.

With no witnesses, illuminated under the harsh, artificial light, Chuck grit his teeth and kept his eyes pressed shut, in an attempt to catch the single tear that managed to escape down his cheek. As a reflex, he reached out to wipe it away, flinching when his hand brushed the hot lights.

"I'm really going to have to insist that you lie still."

Even if he left today – if he stole a wheelchair and went out into the crisp autumn air – he would have nowhere to go. So, he lay still and waited.

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (8:00pm)_

Somewhere on the other side of the wide night, Blair Waldorf stood at her vanity and watched the slant of light over her face.

She had stood there motionless for almost an hour, wondering at the strangely fragile feeling that had come over her. Somewhere over the last three years, she and Chuck had developed an exquisitely endangered ecosystem: a nation of two, bound irrevocably in hatred and love.[2] To find herself suddenly utterly alone in the vast wilderness of her life was jarring and terrifying.

There was only one person who would understand, really, what it was to find yourself suddenly alone in an unfamiliar world.

Caught somewhere between thought and action, Blair found herself reaching for her keys and slipping out of the front door without even waking Serena.

_

* * *

24 November, 2010 (9:33pm)_

It was a relief to be alone with his thoughts; it gave him the illusion of protection from the onslaught of information. With each fact that was thrust at him, Chuck found himself withdrawing into his head: a single need crystallising down to his marrow.

He needed to know who he was. He needed to know everything.

Of course, this did not conform with Hospital policy. He _needed his rest_ and they _didn't want to overwhelm him_. When he had shrugged at this, Nate had given him a suspicious look and Lily had petted his arm. What fools these doctors were. There was no surer way to unlock the anarchy that bubbled just under each person's skin then by urging them to control themselves. Although he had no intention in abiding by their rules, the more immediately problem was finding an opportunity to uncover some information. Gossip Girl would be useful for only the big events and scandals (although Chuck would have settled for information on either of these things), but even this avenue was closed to him without a telephone and Internet access.

So, he genuflected at the altar of obedience in exchange for Lily and Nate to leave him in peace. He had asked Lily to send word to Bart, and she had seemed stricken for a moment, before swallowing several times. Glancing at one of the doctors, she nodded her head and hurried for the door. She seemed to be taking Bart's absence even more personally than Chuck himself, he noted. It was incomprehensible to him: this strange concern she showed for his well-being. He remembered her as a fairly detached and serendipitous mother. Obviously, some things did change.

"Give it time, Chuck," Nate had said, as he acquiesced to Chuck's insistence that he go home and bathe.

It was easy for him, with his mind brimming with memories, to urge him to accept that he had simply lost years from his life. But, Chuck had merely nodded and waited for their footsteps to disappear down the hallway.

It was strange, so strange. Only now that he was alone could truly brood on the feelings that had overcome him since he awakened. It was something akin to the feeling of the eyes playing a trick on the brain, but in this case it was the brain playing a trick on itself. He remembered so vividly those things that people he trusted assured him had occurred years ago.

He could tell that Nate and Lily had been on the verge of blurting things out to him several times during the last few hours. But, there seemed to be some kind of spell upon them. They didn't tare talk or bring anything into the open. There was something in his face, it seemed, that daunted them. It took no more than a glance to prohibit them absolutely from broaching any topic that threatened to expose some aspect of his day-to-day life.[3]

He felt coddled and irritated. But, mostly, he felt as if everything around him were part of intricate scene. Each of these interactions, even though Nate and Lily acted as if they were commonplace, seemed to be full of artifice.

Even now, staring at the ceiling, Chuck waited for the sound of an audience to start clapping and for the joke to finally end.

Now that he thought about it, he _did_ hear something. From somewhere down the hall, he heard the sounds of high-heels on linoleum. They stopped short, just before his open door, so that all that could be made out was the splash of a shadow on the floor.

"You can come in, Waldorf," he found himself saying, without even realizing he had been forming the words.

When she rounded the corner, he noticed that her hair looked different; she must have curled it after she left. Although she avoided his eyes, she devoured the rest of him with her eyes, as if assuring herself that he was still in one piece. Finally, her eyes settled on her own feet as she stood there like a naughty schoolgirl called into the principal's office.

"How did you know it was me?" she asked, finally.

"I know your footsteps."

At that, she looked up, frowning. "You knew my footsteps back then?"

Chuck sucked air through his teeth in frustration, angling his still damaged body away from her. "Oh right," he said bitterly. "You're here for the sideshow. I'll spare you the suspense: this isn't a scene from _Back to the Future._"

"Are you feeling sorry for yourself, Chuck?" she asked, a hint of a smile in her voice.

He glanced over his shoulder to look at her, offering her a small smirk. "_You_ should be feeling sorry for me. I mean this is just fucked up."

"It is definitely fucked," she agreed, sitting down on the chair that Nate had been monopolising. Chuck glanced quickly at the empty chair on his other side; it had been that chair that Blair had pulled next to his bed so she could rest her head on it. Immediately, his mind was transported to the way she had spoken to him before: as if each word were ripped from her chest and thrown at his feet. And then, that kiss. He had hidden it from Nate, partly not wanting to betray her to her boyfriend, and partly because he wanted to guard the memory closely. It was the most vivid memory that he had created since the accident. He folded it up carefully and kept it close to his chest.

"So you swear now," Chuck said, filling the awkward pause. "That's definitely a step in the right direction."

"Oh you have no idea what I get up to these days," she said with a slight grin, sitting up straight in the chair. "I swear, I drink - "

"You drink all the time," Chuck said rolling his eyes. "You're a lightweight I grant you, but you definitely aren't a teetotaller."

"This from the man who tried to challenge the EU Commissioner to a dance-off after one too many!" Blair retorted.

An uneasy silence fell over them. Immediately, Blair realized that the event she had been referring to had occurred last year: during the heady summer when she and Chuck had first gotten together and she had been convinced that it would be forever. They had snuck into a back room and grabbed at each other feverishly, his voice in her ear – "_I love you so fucking much"_ – and her reply – "_I need you. Now._" – until he had lifted her up onto a table.

Chuck – _this _Chuck – had no idea why her cheeks flushed at the recollection. He had no recollection of ever saying such a thing to her. And in the face of his blank face, Blair felt her own certainty falter. How could she have this memory that didn't exist for him? Had any of it really happened?

"Sounds like a good night," Chuck said stiffly.

Blair leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees, examining him closely and placing the handbag she had been inadvertently using as a shield on the ground next to her. Seeing her lower her guard, Chuck fought the impulse to ask her about the kiss. But for some reason, he knew that the ground between them was too uncertain to test. It would be Blair who would steer the conversation; she was the only one who knew what a conversation between them was meant to look like.

"How long are you going to be in here for?"

"I have no idea," Chuck responded moodily. "I'd be the last to know. Serena's mother told me it would be a few weeks."

"Lily," Blair responded automatically, then, a dawning look of realization passed over her face. "You really don't remember anything, do you?"

"I wish people would stop saying that," Chuck responded through gritted teeth.

"I'm sorry, it's just strange when you realize the implications of it, you know?"

"No, Waldorf," Chuck spat. "_You_ should really explain the implications of this whole situation to _me_. Nate had a go earlier. I just don't get sick of it."

"I'm sure that sarcasm is not good for your condition," Blair commented calmly, impervious to his insolence.

"The only think that's going to help my _condition_ is access to the Internet and a phone call to my PI."

It could have been his imagination, but for a moment, a look of panic passed over Blair's face. Smoothing her skirt needlessly over her knees, she cleared her throat. Chuck watched eagerly as these nervous actions played across Blair's body. He could see her collecting herself, calculating his position and hers.

"What's your PI going to tell you, Chuck?" she said, almost gently. "He'll read our bank statements and find out what colleges we're enrolled at. That's not going to make you feel any more informed than you are now."

"Gossip Girl will give me the colour, Mike will get the facts."

He had not noticed how close they were to each other until she leant back in her chair. For a moment, a strange sadness passed over her face, and her eyes were distant and untraceable. To some extent, she seemed more vulnerable than he remembered. There was something graver about the set of her mouth and her eyes were sad and haunting. But, there was a strange distance between them – not the haughtiness that he had always associated with Blair Waldorf, but something more profound.

"Has it occurred to you," she asked softly, her eyes faraway. "That you might not like what you find out?"

"It doesn't matter," he said, watching the way the vein in her neck worked to keep her face turned away from him. "It still happened."

"But don't you see," she said, turning back to face him and allowing her hand to clasp the metal bar that prevented him from inadvertently rolling out of his bed. "It doesn't have to happen for you."

Chuck shook his head stubbornly. "Come on, Waldorf. Don't act like you'd be any different in my shoes."

"I suppose. But, I think you should think twice before you go digging around in all of our lives. "

She knew it was useless; Chuck Bass had never understood the concept of 'boundaries' and 'privacy'. It had been foolish to imagine that their entire past could disappear, when so much of their lives had appeared in print and on the Internet. At best she could delay the inevitable. It was as inevitable as her coming here: whatever flimsy pretence she had given herself (she was visiting a sick friend with a gift), she had known from the moment Serena had told her about Chuck's memory loss that she would never be able to countenance being a secondary figure in his life. She simply couldn't help herself when it came to Chuck. She would return to him now that he was awake, the same way she had stayed close by when his eyes were shut. Each element of her feelings for Chuck were irreconcilable and contradictory. All she knew was that the thought of him caused an ache in her soul like a private arthritis.[4]

The only thing that soothed her was keeping him in her sights, even as he sat there in his nineteen-year old body with his sixteen-year old mind. Even after he had wiped her off the face of his brain. She couldn't leave well enough alone, and she knew it was a mistake.

"You could always save me the trouble," he said casually, searching her face for some indication that she would not treat him like an invalid.

"I got you a gift," she said lightly, ignoring his request. "Well actually, it was one I already had, but never got around to giving you." Chuck's face was impassive as she reached into her handbag and handed him a silver pen. Her hand brushed his as she passed him the thoughtful and surprising gift she had brought all the way here in the middle of the night. For a protracted moment, he stared at the pen, running his hands over it and looking at her face, as if seeking an explanation. "I thought that maybe if you write things down, you might remember something. Or you might decide that you don't need to know everything. It might make you think a bit about what's happening _now_. Instead of the past."

"Why are you being so nice to me?" he said, holding the pen away from his body as if it were somehow poisonous. "What game are you playing, Waldorf?"

Her face didn't even register the pain that it had when she had kissed him. Instead, it was as blank as a white sheet of paper. Only her voice, when she spoke, was distorted with emotion. "I'm not playing any games. I was trying to be a friend."

"Then _be_ a friend and tell me why Lily Van Der Woodsen is talking to my doctors," he said, his voice gaining momentum until he was almost shouting. "Tell me why you fucking kissed me."

"No."

It was a short and simple rejection, and it shocked Chuck deeply. Although his voice now lacked all aggression, his words were low and determined against the faint whining of the machines that surrounded him. "You have no right to keep these things from me. It's my life. I deserve to know."

"You know," Blair said as she climbed to her feet, her face still showing not a single emotion. "You once tried to pretend that you didn't know who you were. You went to a new city, you found a new girlfriend. You even gave yourself a new name - " she sniffed slightly, tightening her group on the strap of her handbag " – albeit a rather trite and derivative name. And I told you that it was mistake to run away from the past." She shook her head, as he sat frozen in his bed. "But, I was wrong. You're better off not knowing."

"I don't accept that," Chuck said in a low, dangerous voice.

"Accept it or don't," Blair said stiffly. "But you should know that _I_ wish I could forget the whole sorry mess."

With that, she walked towards the door of his hospital room, leaving only a faint trail of her perfume and the echoing _clack-clack-clack_ of her heels in her wake.

Chuck frowned after her, trying to make sense of what she had said. Then, with the deliberateness of an actor performing to an audience, he reached for a scrappy notebook that the one of the nurses used to scribble notes estimating his medication load. Under the pretence of testing whether the pen was usable, he scribbled on a blank sheet:

_Blair Waldorf is a bitch._

It was satisfyingly weighty in his hand. Holding it close to his face, as if it were a vital clue to his identity, he noticed that the surface had been marked with engravings of some kind. He squinted down at the words that were written on the side: 11/17/07.

Chuck frowned for a moment. 17 November, 2007 – just over a month after the Waldorf's party, and Chuck's last memory. Blair had indicated that she had given this pen to him as a gift, so he had to assume that there was something significant about this date. Why, though? Why would she give him this tantalizing hint, just moments after vowing not to help him on his quest to uncover their hidden past?

He couldn't help but smirk slightly as he reached out for the same sheet of paper that had fallen into his lap.

_Blair Waldorf is bluffing._

With a thoughtful frown, Chuck compressed the paper into a small ball and threw it into a waste paper basket.

* * *

[1] From Cassandra Claire's classic _Draco Veritas._

[2] A particularly beautiful line I recently read from Danusha Goska, "The Illusion of Protection"

[3] Based on AS Byatt, _Possession: A Romance_.

[4] More from Danusha Goska.

A/N: I hope that didn't disappoint. As I said at the beginning, largely an intermediary chapter, but much more progress to come. Let me know if you still like! I was so moved by your last batch of reviews that I just had to ignore my exams and write this chapter!


	3. Chapter 3: That Memorable Day

A/N: It has been brought to my attention that there is another C/B story in the fandom called "Between the Shadow and the Soul." The title is based on a beautiful Neruda poem. I've sent a message to the lovely Courtney Belle, who has said she doesn't mind if I keep the title as is, but if you guys have another idea for what I can call it, you should feel free to make suggestions! As anyone who has read _The Unbearable Lightness of Chuck and Blair _or the sequel _Lightness and Weight_ will know, I love me a flashback. I hope that you don't mind this latest addition…

_Between the Shadow and the Soul_

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Three: **That Memorable Day

"_That was a memorable day to me, for it made great changes in me. But, it is the same with any life. Imagine one selected day struck out of it and think how different its course would have been. Pause, you who read this, and think for a long moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on that memorable day."_

Charles Dickens, "Great Expectations.

* * *

_**The New York Magazine (Friday 17 November, 2010):**_

**LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON: BASS HEIR IN CAR CRASH**

…_The scene of the crash remains unchanged. No one has thought to remove the police tape or the glass that sprayed onto the asphalt as the driver swerved in a thwarted attempt to avoid the collision. It is perhaps this attempt at aversion that prevented Charles Bass from following a similar fate to his father's: trading death from reportedly serious injuries. _

_There is no word, yet, as to the prognosis of Mr. Bass's injuries. Nor has the business world learned who will manage Mr. Bass's considerable business dealings during his time in hospital. An official press release from the Empire Hotel assures visitors that it is business as usual. _

"_Chuck has made substantial provision in his senior management for such eventualities," says adopted mother and Bart Bass's widow, Lily Humphrey. "I can assure you that during his recuperation the Empire will not suffer neglect."_

_To those well-wishers who would seek information on the current medical situation, Mrs. Humphrey is polite but dismissive. "We thank you for your thoughts and prayers, but now is a time for family and friends."

* * *

_

_**24 November, 2010 (10:54pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

Patient's Name: Charles Bartholomew Bass

Admitted By: Donald Johnson (Emergency Services)

Notes: _A reminder to all treating staff that patient is suffering from amnesia. Patient's personal history remembered only up to 2007. Please refrain from discussion of current events – in particular events of personal significance. High profile case – extreme care urged. If in doubt, call Dr. Levitz, treating neurologist (ext #6692).

* * *

_

_**25 November, 2010 (5:36am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City**_

Chuck dreams hard, these days. But, his waking mind does not remember the substance of them, only the vague sense of loss that accompanies random flashes of a lost memory. But, the images stay with him. They are the light step on the squeaking floorboard the moment before the figure disappears. They haunt him and he wonders if he is being punished.

If it is punishment, it is the most exquisite form of cruelty; the scenes are too breathtakingly beautiful and alien to be real. He closes his eyes and he is there.

He is placing a string pearls against the pale column of a woman's neck.

He is kissing her shoulder and tasting her perfume.

He is resting his chin against her soft skin and feels her hand through his hair.

He makes promises of a life spent together. He uses words like 'forever.' He writes them in the air between them and makes marks on both their skin.

Her face is as fugitive as the years that he as lost. He wakes with a thought that he has never had before.

He misses his father. He misses his mother. And he misses this vexing, exquisite brunette whose face he never remembers in the morning.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (8:30am)**_

_**Columbia University, New York**_

As Blair hurries from the Butler Library, she realizes that she can't help herself.

She has passed the last hour searching through the library stacks, selecting from the vast collection the only tomes that seem to leap out at her. There is an invisible hand that guides her. Each one of the novels she checks out is about memory. One book is about loss. These are not the sorts of books that she usually reads; she likes stories that have a natural progression. She always reads the last line of a novel before starting the first chapter; she likes the certainty of knowing how things are going to end.

She sits down at a table outside her favourite campus café and opens one of the books to the last page:

…_For a swift, marvelous instant, the boy being born knows that this light of memory, wisdom, and death was an Angel and that this other Angel who flies from the navel of heaven with the sword in his hand is the fraternal enemy of the first: he is the Baroque Angel, with a sword in his hand and quetzel wings and a serpent doublet, and a golden helmet, the Angel strikes, strikes the lips of the boy being born on the beach: the burning and painful sword strikes the lips of the boy being born on the beach: the burning and painful sword strikes his lips and the boy forgets, he forgets everything forgets everything, _

_f_

_o_

_r_

_g_

_e_

_t_

_s._[1]

Each word reaches out of the pages and punches her in the gut.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (8:00am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

"You didn't tell him?" Serena asked, her mouth curved into an arc of disappointment.

Nate shrugged helplessly. "What was I meant to do? Your mom was there and she didn't say anything. I couldn't just jump in and say, 'Sorry man, but the only way we can tell Bart where you are is if we use a Ouija board and some Tarot cards.'"

She didn't want to concede the point, so she avoided his eyes and examined the mental frames that supported the depressing tables in the cafeteria. "We have to tell him. Today."

"It's not something you should have to tell your best friend," Nate said, although he didn't refute her point.

"For the second time, at that," Serena added.

Serena had yet to enter that room. She would loiter in the hallways and leap at any doctor that passed her way, playing the family card that had thwarted Nate's attempts at information when Lily left the place. But, something prevented her from actually talking to him. Nate had a sneaking suspicion that Serena was afraid of what she would see reflected back at her if she looked into Chuck's eyes.

They had developed an unspoken timetable: he would speak to Chuck and then they would confer about what had happened in the cafeteria. She was hungry for information, but every time Nate broached the topic that she should come in to see Chuck, she had to make a phone call or she was worrying about Eric. Serena was masterful at avoiding an issue. He had always admired and hated her for that.

Nate glanced at her. "Should we ask Blair to come, too?"

Serena bit her lip doubtfully. "We should tell her at least. I guess it's her choice."

"I don't think she ever really has a choice where Chuck's concerned."

"She does," Serena said, a little too forcefully. "Their mistake was thinking that they were inevitable. Nothing's inevitable."

Nate disagreed silently, noting the way his heart sped up and his stomach sank at the feeling of her hand squeezing his arm to emphasize her point. Serena has always caused an inevitable change in him: her light would filter into his skin – would cause a scarcely discernible change in his physiology. She overwhelms his senses, until he could make out only parts of her: the coquettish eyes, the hair that never seemed to end, and a crooked smile.

He found himself inexplicably cross with her. "I think Chuck and Blair's problems go a lot deeper than thinking they were inevitable."

"You don't have to tell me that," Serena said, obviously irritated with him.

"Well I guess it doesn't matter anymore," Nate responded archly.

"I guess not."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (8:45am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

The morning dawned with clarity and expectation; for the first time since he emerged from his murky sleep, Chuck knew exactly what he had to do.

Mentally, he called it The Plan. Not his best title, sure, but he'd been in an accident, damn it! He was a little off his game.

It was misleading really, because The Plan was actually a person: a nurse (a NILF, as he'd taken to calling her to Nate). Each morning, she came in, all blonde hair and placating words. She was a little slutty in her uniform, and her bland, wide face had just the sort of trusting dumbness that he had always found convenient.

Plus, he was pretty sure that she wanted to do him.

"Good morning, Mr. Bass," she said, with that wide smile and a hint of desire in her eyes.

"Good morning," he responded, his voice low and his eyes distant. He had always known what women like this want; it can't have changed that much in the last three years. That was something he would never understand about women: why they had this strange desire to reach out and fill the spaces between themselves and another person. He had always found remoteness to be the best way to beguile. They always reached out for him empty spaces.

Right on cue, her face creased with concern. "How are you feeling today?"

"Bored," he said with a wan smile. "I haven't been outside this room for a while."

"Getting tired of at staring at the four white walls, huh?"

_Getting tired of having this conversation, actually._

"It's fine," he shrugged helplessly, gesturing at his mangled leg and rotating his neck to draw attention to his injured shoulder. "I will just have to wait until I heal up enough to get around myself."

With that, he settled back against his pillows, as if he has no further interest in continuing the conversation. His face was the very picture of exquisite boredom. He could not have driven the point home any more unless he slammed the door shut in her face. As she leant over the bed, checking the monitors and his chart, he feels her hand on his arm.

"What if I got you a wheelchair?" she said conspiratorially. "I could push you around."

Even while playing the part, the thought of _anyone_ pushing him around made him want to gag. But, he somehow managed to school his features and maintain that helplessness that made women like The Plan weak at the knees. She wanted to help him; it was written all over her face. So, he smiled ingratiatingly.

"You wouldn't mind?"

"No, no. Not at all. It's no trouble."

He gave her a smile in payment. "I'd appreciate it, thank you."

She all but ran from the room, nearly bowling over Serena.

For a moment, it appeared as if Serena is on the brink of laughing at the woman's antics, but when her eyes fell on the cool and calculating look on his face, she seemed to stiffen slightly. With the concentration of someone trying hard to act normally, she strode into the room and stood awkwardly next to the visitor's chair.

He waited as she shuffled slightly, scratching her leg at the point where her skirt ended and her patterned stockings began. With as much self-conscious lecherousness as he could muster, Chuck's regarded her from the soles of her feet to the top of her head.

"Serena Van Der Woodsen," he drawled, any vestige of helplessness having fled with The Plan. "Long time, no see."

"Chuck Bass," she responded haughtily. "Long time, no memory."

He examined his fingernails. "I see that you and Nate have been attending the same come-back workshop. Good for you."

Serena eyed the seat, as if trying to figure out whether it is a trap of some kind. When she could discern no overt sign of danger, she sat carefully on it, her long legs crossed and her right hand tugging at her hair.

"Nothing to say to that, huh?" he smirked. "Don't worry. You're a work-in-progress."

"I'm not here to spar with you, Chuck."

"Of course not. I assumed you were just here to catch a glimpse of my scantily clad body."

"I prefer the hospital gown to the suits," Serena said, offering him a wry smile.

"Please. I have impeccable taste. I don't need to have a memory to know that I look amazing."

"So," Serena interrupted. "Obviously your ego has survived your accident. Other than that, how are you feeling?"

"Why don't you just ask your mother? She's been hanging around like a virgin the morning after a deflowering. In some cultures, we'd be married by now."

Serena shot him an appalled look. "Ugh, I'd forgotten how you disgusting you were at this age."

She had not intended to wound him like that, but the moment she uttered the words, he almost flinched. It would take the many and various rejections at Bart's hands, his lingering guilt over the man's death, and his irrepressible sense of failure at his business efforts to make Chuck perfect his poker face. Now, lying in this bed and with only sixteen debaucherous years behind him, he was a sight more vulnerable than Serena was used to. He may have been more dangerous at this year: more ruthless and with less empathy, but this had been the time she had been more convinced that he might change.

It was his 2010 manifestation that truly terrified her, when he was driven by the ambitions of a dead man, relishing his own talents as a liar and sacrificing those hard-won affections to the altar of a cut-out he imagined he was meant to become by virtue of a birth-right. Chuck at sixteen was a slave to his impulses, without giving thought to the consequences. The Chuck she had seen when he and Blair were together was a constantly dimming light in her own recollection. The Chuck she had known just before the accident, who had crossed an invisible line of betrayal with Blair and Jenny, was in an entirely different league. He did terrible things, and he did them on purpose.

She shook her head as if to clear it. "Sorry," she said, trying to lighten the atmosphere. "You must be sick of us all reminding you about how much time has passed."

"All of you?" Chuck said with an eyebrow raised. "I assume by that you mean Nate. I haven't gotten the impression that there's much of a collective anymore."

"Well, I wasn't here as much as Blair, obviously," Serena said mindlessly. "But I was here."

"Waldorf has been acting even more bipolar than usual," Chuck commented, peering at Serena with renewed interest.

"Do you blame her?"

"Because she must be devastated that all the precious memories we shared have disappeared," he snorted sarcastically.

"Chuck," Serena said softly. "Please don't try to talk about what you don't understand."

For a moment, the injustice of her comment caused his eyes to narrow and his nostrils to flair. It was a tall order, coming from her, to tell him to keep his mouth shut about things he didn't understand, when she was clearly allied with those people who refused to tell him a thing about his life.

"Gee S," he said coolly. "If I tried to make you follow that rule, you'd never speak."

To his surprise, she chuckled at that. "I've missed your witty banter."

_I've missed your witty banter._

It was not a memory. It was, at best, a memory of dream that had ended long ago. Perhaps, it was no more than a whisper he had heard third-hand, but the moment she said those words, he felt the queerest sense of déjà vu.

"We've had this conversation before," he said intently. "You've said that before."

Serena leaned forward in her chair, eyeing him with a keen interest. "Do you remember something?"

He sat with his eyes shut, not caring that Serena was watching him. He closed his eyes and tried to stare through the eyes of the past, hoping that if he froze the moment, captured the feeling of déjà vu in his hand, it would lead him to a precious, lost memory. But, of it's own accord, the feeling faded.

"No. It was nothing."

He looked so crestfallen that Serena's heart ached for him. "I did say that to you," she said gently. "In the Palace bar, just after I got home from boarding school."

"So you really went to boarding school?" Chuck asked, opening his eyes and trying to press the searing disappointment away from himself. "I thought you were in rehab."

"Nope," she said with a crooked smile, as if sharing a great joke with herself. "Just the usual: took some drugs, made a sex tape, killed a guy."

He rolled his eyes. "Messing with an amnesia patient is just wrong."

For some reason, Serena wore a wide grin. Sensing that the joke was at his expense and not enjoying the sensation, Chuck remembered his purpose for the day. He shifted uncomfortably in his hospital bed, making a great show of grimacing with discomfort. It was not a difficult sell; in truth, he felt quite a lot of pain.

"Are you okay?" Serena asked, her face creased with concern. "Should I call the nurse?"

"No," he grunted. "The buzzer thing's broken."

"It's fine," Serena said quickly, jumping to her feet. "I'll go find the nurse."

The moment she walked out of the room, he summoned all of his will power and leant over the raining of the bed. Ignoring the tearing feeling in his shoulder and the strange burning in his chest, he reached down towards Serena's handbag. He had, at most, a minute or two before Serena darted back into the room. With his last drops of strength, he finally grabbed onto her handbag.

This mission accomplished, he reached into the bag and pulled out her bulging purple wallet. Aware that she would never notice a thing, he pulled out several notes and a handful of coins before zipping up the bag and placing it back on the ground. The money, he stuffed into his bedside drawer.

Lying flat on his back once more, Chuck struggled to catch his breath.

Within seconds, Serena had returned with a squat little nurse by the name (he double checked to make sure he hadn't misread) Nurse Ratchett. Ratchett was around sixty with the sort of no-nonsense bearing that assured Chuck that there would be no shenanigans under her watch.

"You feel pain, you press this," she snapped, gesturing to a contraption connected one of the tubes that attached a drip to his arm. "It's not rocket science."

With that she flounced from the room, muttering about special treatment and spoilt teenagers.

"Would it have killed you to at least find a hot nurse?" Chuck complained, glaring at Serena.

"You know," she said thoughtfully. "I think it would have."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (10:04am)**_

_**Columbia University, New York**_

Blair had been ignoring Serena's increasingly exasperated calls for at least two hundred meters now, but still her friend's voice carried to her ears. It was like a faint irritation that she couldn't shake - like a song whose name eluded her but which she couldn't get out of her head.

It was not that she didn't want to see Serena; after the weeks she'd had, all she wanted was for her best friend to wrap her arms around her. But, she knew this tone of voice, she knew that the urgency in Serena's voice as not about Blair. Serena wanted to talk about Chuck; Blair could hear it in every syllable that Serena shouted.

"I can follow you all day, B," Serena called across the Quadrangle. "And I should point out that _I'm _wearing flats."

Blair stopped short, turning to face Serena with a mild and sarcastic smile on her face. Of course, the only sign of exertion on her friend's face were two charming red patches on her cheeks.

Serena never sweated. Serena never puffed. Serena never let anyone hold onto her for too long.

The envy was still there, but this time it was followed by the bitter taste of regret.

"Oh, hey, S," she said sweetly. "Was there something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"No, of course not," Serena responded with her arms crossed. "I always chase people around like this."

"Well that must be quite awkward."

"Listen," she said briskly. "I know that Chuck is the last thing you want to talk about right now."

"Please," Blair responded, adjusting her hair over her shoulders and glancing around as if she were bored by the entire conversation. "I couldn't care less if we talk about Chuck or not. I'm over him."

"Fine. Whatever. It's just…" Serena searched her face, looking for some indication of what was going on inside Blair's head. As usual, there was nothing but a haughty veneer in place. For the first time, Serena found herself missing Chuck – the Chuck that had been able to read the words that formed behind Blair's eyes, the Chuck who always seemed to know what Blair was thinking, as if they shared a single mind. That Chuck, Serena realized for the first time, was gone. Possibly forever. "We're telling him. Today. About Bart. I just thought you should know."

Serena waited for something in Blair's face to change, for her to register the magnitude of what was to come. But, she didn't even wince. She obviously remembered all she had learned from her diabolical ex-boyfriend, even if he sat in the hospital without any of his old defenses. For a strange instant, Serena saw two Blairs. There was the child she had grown up with and this woman she saw before her. One lived in make-believe, and the other was all too worldly.

"Fine," Blair said simply. "Was that it?"

"Yeah," Serena responded flatly. "That was it."

Blair watched Serena turn to leave. She had seen the disappointment in her old friend's eyes. What had she expected? After all that Chuck had taken away from her, all the pain that that had crystallized into a sharp point she carried in her hand all day, did Serena really expect her to still to want to want to protect him? _Did _she still want to protect him?

Surely it had to mean something: the way that Chuck had erased their past. Perhaps, of once, the universe was giving her a choice. She could undo all of it. She could turn back to the first, unblemished page of her life, when her biggest concern was sparkling in the eyes of other people: Nate, Eleanor, her minions, the world. She had been so many different people, so uncomfortable with the darker side of her personality. She had made herself scarce.

For years, she had hidden away in a deep cave behind her public face. Until, Chuck had snuck in and regarded the damp walls and the dark shadows and told her it was beautiful. He had brought daylight to the dark places and she had been unashamed of herself.

Then, he had crushed it all. With merciless efficiency, he had taken what she was and replaced it with some cheap facsimile. He had sold her out for a hotel and a dash of ego – even having the gall to play victim in the end, when he took Jenny Humphrey to his bed.

_I thought you didn't love me anymore_.

If she could place everything that had happened on the scales, which way would it tip? Would those little acts of kindness outweigh the shock of that final betrayal? For the life of her, she couldn't make up her mind.

Somewhere, in the course of the last evening, she had decided not to make a decision. Exhausted, she had given Chuck a single clue: the date that had started everything.

_Find me, don't find me – it's entirely up to you._

"Serena, wait." Serena turned around, a dim light of hope in her eyes. But, Blair's face was still hard and immovable in the low winter sunlight. "Leave me out of it."

"What do you mean?"

"When you tell him, don't mention me."

Serena exhaled through her teeth, obviously exasperated by Blair's stony demeanor. "B, how am I meant to do that?"

"I don't care. Just do it."

With that, Serena's shoulders sagged. "Okay. Whatever you want."

"Also, I'd like to be there," Blair said flatly, studiously avoiding Serena's compassionate eyes.

"Okay."

Blair strode away without saying goodbye, not noticing the appreciate looks of a handsome young lacrosse player or the envious eyes of the more awkward, gawky women who wore Columbia chinos and wore thick glasses. She didn't notice, because none of it really mattered. Blair could have been walking on another planet, surrounded by life forms she didn't recognize as sentient, for the interest she showed in these frail creatures around her.

She had gone to war with Chuck Bass and lived to speak of it. Blair's aura of difference had never been more defined in Serena's eyes. She could have been a stranger.

Serena felt a strange chill and pulled her coat tighter around her frame. It was not the weather; it was the strange shock of being suddenly immersed in a landscape she didn't recognize.[2]

* * *

_**25 November 2010 (10:14am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

It didn't mean anything, the way he carried around the pen she had given him. It was a satisfying weight in Chuck's hand. Its smooth lines were reassuring. That was all. He ran his finger over the engravings, the numbers coming upon him as if he were reading Braille.

_11/17/07._

"What a lovely pen," the nurse commented.

"It was a gift," he responded archly, tucking it away as if he were embarrassed to be seen with it. "From a friend. It's nothing."

Chuck had always prided himself on his aplomb when it came to manipulating situations, but he had to admit that this had been simpler than most. The nurse – Gina, she said breathlessly, her name was Gina – was unusually malleable, and soon enough he found himself gliding down the hospital halls, propelled by his eager companion, who spoke about anything and everything that came to mind.

They had circled the floor once, Chuck half-listening as he kept an eagle eye out for his goal. As they rounded the corner nearest the cafeteria, Chuck finally found what he was looking for: two bright blue payphones.

"So my friends and I rented this amazing place, right next to the beach. It was so much fun just surfing in the morning and then hanging out with everyone at night. We stayed up so late and got so, so, so drunk. I barely remember any of it – ha! I'm joking. I remember all of it…"

"Gina," Chuck said smoothly. "Would you do me a favour?"

He knew, at this point, that she would move heaven and earth for him if it took his fancy.

"Of course," she said breathlessly, coming to a halt and crouching down next to his wheelchair, so that they were eye level.

"It's stupid," he said bashfully. "I just…I have the biggest craving for those little pudding things? You know, the ones you bring me with lunch? I don't suppose you could get one for me from the cafeteria…"

She bit her lip, eyeing the cafeteria door as if measuring the distance she would have to travel. "I don't know. We're not meant to take patients in there."

_Even better._

"I could just wait out here. I'll act busy."

"Well…" she said doubtfully.

It was time to bring out the big guns. "Just as a stop-gap. Until I finally get out of here and can take you to a proper dinner."

That seemed to do the trick; she grinned at him, obviously visualizing what she would wear when he took her to some ridiculously expensive restaurant. She was probably imagining their wedding day already, Chuck mused idly. All he had to do was sit there with a bland and beatific expression on his face, allowing her imagination to run rampant.

"Alright," she grinned. "Don't go anywhere."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

The moment she turned her back, the smile melted from his face and he propelled his wheelchair towards the sad row of payphones. Frowning slightly, he stared at contraptions, pulling out the money he had sequestered from Serena's wallet and trying to figure out what he was meant to do. In his life, he had never had the need to use a payphone, but, desperate times call for desperate measures. So long as Nate and Lily insisted on treating him as if he were wrapped in cotton wool, he would never get the answers he so desperately wanted.

_11/17/07._

They didn't understand – none of them did – what it was like to wake up and find that the world around you had changed immeasurably. Until he found some sign or signal of what his life before the accident had been like, he would never truly believe that so much time had passed. In the course of what felt like one, long sleep, he had been transported into a scene, which he did not understand: where Nate and Serena looked impossibly grown up and where Lily Van Der Woodsen (-Humphrey) cared about whether he were alive or dead.

He had awoken to a place where Blair Waldorf kissed him like she was ripping her own heart out and throwing it at his feet.

_I told you that it was mistake to run away from the past. But, I was wrong. You're better off not knowing._

That settled it, then. He picked up the handset and slipped some coins into the phone.

His hands were steady as he dialed. It took ten rings before he got through to the voicemail of his old P.I., Mike. He had known it was a long-shot; Mike was understandably security conscious and rarely kept the same telephone for too long. But, Chuck knew that he made a point of listening to his old mailboxes. When one of his more insane conquests had stolen his mobile phone and had sent threatening messages to all women in his contact list, Chuck had left a message at one of Mike's old voicemail boxes and had had his phone restored to him within the hour. He didn't ask questions; he just got the job done.

"Mike," Chuck said at the beep. "This is Chuck Bass. I am currently a patient at Lennox Hill Hospital and do not have access to my mobile phone or email account. But, I need you to put together briefings on…" Chuck swallowed, searching about for a way to phrase it that didn't sound insane. "Well, on me, actually. What I've done over the last three years. I need as much information as possible, and I need you to exercise discretion. By the end of the week I want to have everything there is to know about me in my hand."

Chuck paused, uncertain about how much time he had left from the coins he had shoved into the phone. His hand tightened around the pen he was still carrying with him. He glanced down at it, enjoying the way it managed to shine even under the fluorescent lights. It was a strange sort of ornament to keep with him; he felt foolish sitting here and contemplating it as the seconds wore on. He was not meant to be sentimental; he was Chuck Bass.

"And Mike? I need you to get me everything you can find on Blair Waldorf."

With that, he hung up the phone, glancing over his shoulder to make sure Gina was still occupied in the cafeteria. Deciding that she had probably been distracted by something shiny, Chuck returned once more to the task at hand.

Whenever he dialed Bart Bass's number, he felt a familiar sense weight in his stomach. Usually, it was because he was ringing his father – always the business line, never at home – from a police precinct or in order to summon him down to the St Jude's principal's office. Even now, calling from the hospital when he had no reason to feel guilty – when Bart was clearly in the wrong – a sense of trepidation came upon him with each progressive number.

It took only two rings before a secretary answered.

"Bass Industries," he said in a bored tone. "This is Paul."

Chuck couldn't remember anyone named Paul at Bass Industries, but then again, three years had elapsed. "Hello Paul," he said smoothly, with just a hint of condescension. "This is Chuck Bass." There was a sharp inhalation on the other side of the line and Chuck smirked in satisfaction. "I'd like to speak to my father, Bart Bass."

The silence extended as Chuck continued glancing over his shoulder in irritation. Even Gina could not be inept enough to take much longer to haggle with the cafeteria staff for another pudding. She might be distracted by gossiping for a few minutes, but he was certainly on borrowed time.

"Is this some kind of sick joke?" the voice at the other end of the line crackled with irritation.

It is only years of training that allowed Chuck to swallow his vague sense of panic and adopt a bored tone. "You don't seem to be laughing, so let's assume that I was being serious."

The man snorted. "Listen, buddy. I don't know what kind of sicko you are, but if you're seriously asking to speak to Bart Bass, you've obviously been on Jupiter for the last few years. In a cave. With your fingers in your ears."[3]

With that, the line went dead.

* * *

[1] Carlos Fuentes, _Christopher Unborn._

[2] Based loosely on passages form Michael Cunningham, _The Hours._

[3] From _The Simpsons,_ of all things.

* * *

A/N: Not much more to go, to be honest. I don't want this story to be another epically long one like _The Unbearable Lightness _series. Thank you so much to everyone who reviewed


	4. Chapter 4: A Certain Glance

_A/N: Anyone who has read my other series will know that I love me a flashback. I hope you don't mind that I indulge in some during this chapter. They are meant to represent Chuck mulling over his past._

**_Between the Shadow and the Soul_**

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Four: **A Certain Glance

_And, yet, a certain word, a glance, a guise,_

_Will mirror, never show, reflecting not my gaze, _

_But my uncertain question_

_Caught inside a shadow _

_Of our shifting eyes._

_ - The Good Shepherd_ (2006)

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (12:32pm)**_

_**Strand Book Store, New York City**_

Not for the first time, Blair takes a moment to understand what the man standing in front of her is saying.

Recently, Blair has been finding herself lost in moments. She will find herself staring into a person's face, see their mouths moving with vigour or in an undertone and she will not comprehend a single word. Other people will laugh and she will just stand, looking intently at their faces, wondering whether they are really as bland as they seem. Those wide, open faces of the people around her perplex her; they walk around unarmed, not expecting a fight. They tell their secrets to anyone who listens.

They trust, they share, they love.

But, anyone who has had the unique experience of dating Chuck Bass knows that everyone lets you down eventually. Blair cannot understand how they are not fearful, the teeming crowds who trip and fall in love at every street corner.

"Maybe we could discuss it over dinner."

Her eyes are blank as they idly take in his expensive suit, the early edition _Tristram Shandy _in his hand.

In another time, Blair would have relished this meeting: somewhere between the rare books that lined the famous bookstore, she had found a handsome, wealthy stranger. When she was a child, she would have been planning their engagement party at the New York Library – so that they would be surrounded by the great love stories.[1]

("_Tristram Shandy_ – that's ambitious.")

("I'm an ambitious guy.")

_Say something,_ she urges herself, aware that he is shifting uncomfortably in the face of her silence.

"I don't respond to hypotheticals," she says smoothly, smiling slightly, even as she feels a cavernous space in her chest. She wonders if he can hear the echo.

He is bold, suddenly, with his heart on his sleeve. "What if I made it a formal invitation?"

It shouldn't feel this way, as if the world and even the romantic epics on the shelves were frowning at her. It shouldn't feel as if she were cheating on a man who didn't even know that she had once loved him. Perhaps it is a product of their plan to tell Chuck about Bart, today.

Perhaps, it is the unfinished sentence of the great romance that had been cut short.

Even if it is merely a result of the first Great Love (great _adult _love) that turned into the Great Torment becoming the measure of all those that come next, it shouldn't feel this way. It shouldn't feel counterfeit.

She remembers herself. "Then I would give it the appropriate consideration."

He even hands out his smiles easily as he scrambles for a pen. "What's your number?"

The pen hovering just above a scrap of paper makes her pause. A small voice in her head reminds her that Chuck would never do something as pedestrian as ask for a number. A louder voice insists that the unique alchemy of Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck was a product of _her_ love – that she could create that same chemistry with someone else.

"My name is Blair Waldorf," she says slowly, backing away.

"You're not going to give me your number."

"I'm sure that an enterprising man like yourself will find a way to contact me if he wants to," she calls over shoulder, hurrying towards the exit of the store.

"I'm Nicholas," he calls after her.

She leaves him then, her hands shaking slightly and her breaths shallow. She knows what she is doing – not flirting, not acting coy, not conjuring romance. She is running away, as fast as she can. Chuck looks at her from every corner, catches up with her every step, and even grins with approval at the commencement of another game, even as he scowls at the thought of someone else playing with her.

He haunts her.

He has buried everything they were to each other, and he haunts her.

* * *

_**17 October, 2007 (4:15pm)**_

_**Waldorf Apartment, New York City**_

He watches her.

But, behind his eyes he sees her as she once was. It had been no more than year since Serena had packed a bag and disappeared from their world. It was fitting somehow; Serena was always a little too big for her surroundings, her need for more and more and more _fun_ was always a bit much for those around her. The day she left it rained, and Chuck suspected that those who loved her: Nate, Blair, those legions of sad young men with longing eyes who wouldn't even dare speak to her, would associate the weather with her departure.

Of course, Chuck had always preferred the cold and overcast weather. It was Blair Waldorf weather and it came wearing stockings and fire-engine red lipstick.

As Chuck languishes on the couch, surrounded by the warm intimacy of the people he had grown up with, he sees Blair greeting her guests, wearing head-to-toe black as if she is in mourning. Within minutes, Chuck's impression will be confirmed when the Serena Van Der Woodsen juggernaut walks through the door.

But for now, he can only admire her. Not just because her pale skin glows, but because there is one thing she will show to no one else: one thing about her that belongs to Chuck alone.

He is the only one who sees it, really. He alone sees how furiously she works to keep things afloat, how fierce her machinations were – how she probably planned for him to be sitting between Kati and Is as she dragged a politely obliging Nate into her bedroom.

He plays his role – calling out to Nate, drawing the crowd's attention to the Perfect Couple. A part of him wants to derail what Blair has planned, but a larger part of him wants her plans to succeed. There is a pleasure in watching her _winning_, watching her finally making the world outside look like her dreams. There is a pleasure in watching her, even if he broods on way their dynamic might change if she and Nate take this next step with each other.

But, at some point over the course of the last year, as they started spending more time together, he had caught a glimpse at least of the substance of her dreams. Those dreams drive her. They are carefully crafted and exquisitely detailed.

She wants them to come true, so desperately that she even allows Chuck Bass to help her.

Since Serena left town and Blair began the careful process of solidifying her power, he has been her lieutenant. They trade secrets like marbles. He accumulates facts about her, and can't help but supply her with his own. It is reckless on both behalves. But, for his part, Chuck knows he cannot use them against her – could not stand to see him stoop, even for an instant.

He likes seeing her strong.

So, when Serena bursts in, and Nate's eyes send her messages, and Blair embraces her for show – when everything happens, Chuck leans against the doorframe and watches Blair's head lowered.

He likes seeing her vengeful.

It may look like defeat, but really it's laying plans. He can't help but grin at the thought of what she might come up with next. He sips his drink and watches her.

He _sees_ her, even as she hides.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (12:30pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

Chuck had lost track of how long he had been sitting in a chair in his hospital room, watching the last memory he had of before the accident play out for his entertainment on the unadorned wall opposite the armchair.

He had heard somewhere that focusing on familiar images, on precious memories, was a good way to maintain your calm in moments of stress.

Did he have precious memories? He couldn't have listed them; until he woke up in this hospital he hadn't paid memory much heed. In fact, it was usually the sign of a good night if he had trouble remembering exactly what had transpired. Now, though, he knew how precious memories were. He knew that they furnished the room, they were the substance of a character.

And so, even as panic had threatened to overcome him, it was replaced with a drab numbness. He didn't know how Chuck Bass reacted to stress. So, all he could do was focus on the only memory that seemed to comfort him.

It was, in his mind at least, the night of the accident. And when he had left the Waldorf's apartment, sharing a backslapping hug with a slightly stoned Nate, she had smiled sweetly and offered to accompany him to the elevator.

He had glanced over his shoulder, ensuring that they were alone. "I assume I'll be hearing from you."

"Why do you assume that, Bass?"

"I have a hunch that you'll be needing my services to deal with this new Serena situation."

They had shared a smirk, even as she had shaken her head and confidently informed him that she wasn't worried about Serena.

"Well then," he had said softly, leaning in as if to kiss her cheek. "Let me know if you need any of my other services."

He had only just dodged her kick as the elevator doors closed.

Downstairs on the street, the night had been full of potential and he had been young and rich and a little bit buzzed. The night air was crisp and the promise of more lies and manipulations to come had made him feel exultant.

There were the lights of the cars. There was the sound of angry honking. And then, there was nothing.

The last memory he had was of Blair Waldorf. Then, the first thing that he had woken up to was Blair Waldorf. This began and ended with her, but for the life of him Chuck couldn't have said why.

"Dan, darling," a woman's voice said, almost outside his door. "I am sure you are an incredible turkey maker, but I just think we should leave it to professionals. Exactly. A relaxing morning is just what this family needs. Great – no, really, don't worry, we'll plan it when I get home. Goodbye."

It was the voice he had been waiting for, and yet he scarcely reacted, apart from rubbing the over-grown stubble on his face. When Lily appeared at the door, she started slightly at the sight of the empty bed, before her eyes fell on Chuck, sitting in the forgotten armchair that slouched next to the window. She recalled, briefly that Blair had often chosen to sleep in it during long nights spent at Chuck's bedside. Presently, Chuck's eyes were as vacant as she could ever remember them being, his posture tight and his hands cupped at his chin.

"Charles," she said, slightly flustered. "You're up. I don't know whether I should be celebrating or summoning a nurse." When there was no response, she slipped her cell phone back into her purse. "That was my step-son, worrying about Thanksgiving. I asked the doctor whether it would be possible for you to join us for a meal, but he assured me it was impossible."

Chuck just sat there.

She was struck, suddenly, by a memory of him, stumbling drunk outside the Palace, when she had lifted him bodily from the ground and he had intimated that Bart was fooling around behind her back. She hadn't known him, then. She hadn't known what to look for in his face. She had made the mistake of making a child of him, and he had allowed it merely because he'd never had a family before and he wanted one desperately. It had taken years for them to reach the level of moderate intimacy they had enjoyed just before the accident. There was no sign of that intimacy as he stared blankly at the wall behind her back.

"I've narrowed it down to a few scenarios," he said coolly.

"Scenarios?" Lily said uncertainly, chilled to the bone at tone of his voice, so perfectly unaffected.

He stretched his uninjured leg in front of him, finally shifting his gaze until it was on her face. The instant his slanted, dark eyes met hers, Lily found herself wishing that he had continued to bore a hole in the wall.

"Explaining why my father wouldn't come to visit," he said simply. "Even measuring by the low parenting bar I use for Bart, it'd just be considered poor form in the public eye not to at least send a note." If possible, his eyes became even cooler. "But even if he's outdone himself in the helicopter parent stakes, that wouldn't explain his absence from Bass Industries."

"Charles," Lily said pleadingly. "Perhaps we should call in the doctor - "

"So I've narrowed it down," Chuck interrupted, noting the way her pale hand twisted her necklace. "Either questionable business dealings has seen my father incarcerated in some kind of low-level federal prison or he's skipped the country trying to fight some sort of indictment. I'd assume something Polanski-esque. My father has always had a taste for younger women." He examined Lily's face. "But neither of those scenarios is right, are they, _Lily_?"

She did not miss the faintly sarcastic emphasis he placed on her first name. She found that she had lost the ability to speak in the face of his torturous, one-sided interrogation. He was driving at something, she could tell.

"Because you'd have to take Bass Industries from his cold, _dead_ hand."

She knew that the truth was written all over his face, because he drew a sharp breath at the sight of her. He looked away from her, releasing her from the vice of his direct gaze. There was a sense of relief from the end of that steely gaze, and Lily felt her tongue loosen.

"I am truly sorry, Charles," she said softly, pressing her hand to her chest.

It was all the confirmation he needed. He nodded to himself, a muscle in his jaw working under the skin as he clenched his teeth.

"As I suspected," he said. "But, what I really want to know is on what authority Lily_ Humphrey_ feels that she is justified in lying to me about something like this."

He still wouldn't look at her, but she knew that if he sensed the slightest deceit in her voice in this moment, it would, quite simply, be over between them. When she spoke, her voice was surprisingly strong and clear. It seemed to echo between them as if it were ringing out from an elevated point.

"Because Lily Humphrey used to be Lily Bass," she said simply. "But whatever my name is, Charles, you have to understand that I was trying to protect you."

"Protect me?" Chuck said incredulously, his face whipping back to hers. "I don't need your protection, thank you."

She leaned forward, pressing her palms to the hospital bed, which was the only thing that separated them. "I know you don't remember me, but please believe me when I say that I had your best interests at heart," Lily said desperately. "Your father and I were serious about making a family – we were going to legally adopt each other's children. I adopted you. I _care_ about you." She drew in a heartening breath. "And you may not know it yet, but you care about me, too."

For a suspended moment, Lily stood next to the bed, her chest heaving and her eyes locked on Chuck's face. She wished, for a moment, that she were someone who cried. She hadn't cried since she was a little girl. Even now, with her heart aching and her throat burning, she knew she wouldn't be able to conjure the tears that seemed to be such a cathartic release for other people. When had the rules ever applied to Lily Van Der Woodsen Bass Humphrey?

She could see that he was completely unmoved by her little speech.

"I can assure you I don't care about you," Chuck said flatly. "Now please see yourself out."

"We can talk about this," Lily said softly.

"Leave," Chuck said, his voice once more cool and distant. "Or I'll call security."

"If that's what you want, then I'll go." She paused only briefly at the door. "I really am sorry."

He gave no indication that he had even heard her, lost once more in the only images that seemed to bring him comfort.

Lily strode out of his room and down the hall, leaving him alone with his thoughts, with his anger. It wasn't until she passed through the electronic doors of the hospital that she felt the strangest sensation. Pressing her finger to her cheek, she found that a single tear had escaped. One tear and not one more.

She stood for a long time, staring at the glistening point on the tip of her finger. It was tinged slightly with her black mascara. A part of her longed to hurry back to his room, with this: the physical evidence that she cared for him.

She wiped her finger on her dark pants and slipped into the limo that idled patiently outside.

* * *

_**17 August, 2007 (3:20pm)**_

_**Constance and St Jude's Auditorium, New York**_

She doesn't notice him enter.

He lingers for a few moments at the back of the room, watching her as she hands out agendas and issues instructions. The neckline of her blouse wouldn't raise eyebrows aboard the Mayflower, but as always her skirt is teasingly short and her stockings eye-catchingly vivid.

As Chuck stands there, unobserved, there is a slight titter over something one of Blair's minions says.

"No Penelope," she snaps. "You can't auction off your virtue. We're actually trying to collect some _money_ for the victims of the Lima earthquake, and by all accounts you'll give it up to anyone who buys you a drink."

"I can personally vouch for that," Chuck says.

Everyone in the room turns to look at him, the St Jude's boys guffawing appreciatively and the Constance girls sharing knowing looks with each other. Chuck Bass was being an asshole, the looks said, but he probably knows what he's talking about.

The one who knows him the best, however, is the last to recover. There is something deeply incongruous about Chuck Bass attending the first organizational meeting of the Charity Committee's Earthquake Appeal. She narrows her eyes at him. She can't quite discern his intention.

For his part, he can read every expression on her face; no one watches her like he does, no one pays as much attention to the ever shifting expressions of her haughty face like he does, no one sees the way she looks at Nate, how fiercely she lays down the foundations of her future, and how hard she will fight to attain her goals quite like he does.

And no one knows how terrified she is that at any moment it will all be derailed.

"Are you lost, Bass?" she asks coolly.

"That depends," he responds, his hands deep in his pockets, with his tie artfully disheveled. "Is this the Celibacy Club?"

"No."

"Shame," Chuck responds wistfully. "I was hoping that I'd been sent to report to a club where there is a chance of getting a hand-job from some self-loathing Jesus freak."

Some of the boys are laughing outright, and Blair can sense the changing dynamic in her audience. In the hidden corners of a party, plotting against a mutual enemy, they may be allies, but here in the public domain, she is in charge and he is a scene-stealing nuisance.

"If your little stand-up routine is done," Blair says with a saccharine smile. "I would like to have a quick word with you. In private."

"Okay," he says ruefully. "But people will talk."

"Then they should talk about sourcing donations from businesses. Excuse me for just a moment, everyone."

She grabs his arm and drags him bodily through the door of the auditorium. He notices the door swing on its hinges for a moment before settling his eyes on her agitated face. Alone with him in a deserted hallway, all signs of her proper countenance evaporates and her eyes are fierce and impatient.

"What, the hell, are you doing here, Bass?"

He crosses his arms, examining the red, black and white tiles of the floor and the point at which they meet a low-lying wooden bench. He knows that he is going to have to give something up to her, to convince her to allow him to stay in her fascist little dominion. She will demand something in payment and he hates this feeling of living up to her worst expectations. His stomach is in knots and he is oddly reminded of confronting Bart with his latest indiscretion.

So, he settles for sarcasm. "I'm helping the Charity Committee organize its auction. I hear it's going to be the best one yet."

"If you want to screw around, do it somewhere else."

He mumbles something in response.

"What?" she says, mirroring his gesture and folding her own arms across her chest. "I didn't catch that."

"I said that I was sent here."

"By whom?"

"The Headmaster," Chuck says with a shrug. "It was either help out with the Charity Committee or get suspended."

For a moment, she forgets their tacit agreement never to acknowledge their friendship.

"Oh Chuck," she says shaking her head. "What was it this time?"

"You know, I honestly can't remember."

"Why do you let yourself get caught?" Blair asks rhetorically. "If you just didn't - "

"Well I did," he says flatly, feeling an unfamiliar flare of guilt in the face of Blair's disappointment. "So here we are."

He watches as she stitches herself back together, as she masters the unruly show of emotion she had unwittingly displayed. "So what? I'm just supposed to let you run amok in my Committee?"

He tears his eyes away. "Or, you can let me get suspended."

The pause is heavy in the air between them; he knows that the moment is more significant to him then it is to her. He honestly couldn't say for sure how he fit into the delicate balancing of Blair's interests. He holds his breath and waits for her to give him some sign that he means nothing to her, that he is no more than a stop-gap until Serena and Nate return to her once more.

He knows how easy it would be for her to walk away from him; no one else seemed to have any trouble.

"Come on, then," she says, starting back towards the auditorium.

For a moment, his heart catches in his chest. But, on the outside he is cool and unflappable. "Waldorf," he says in mock horror. "Anyone would think that you didn't want to see me get kicked out."

"I'd be bored without you," she says with a smile, walking backwards.

She walks away from him - as usual - but he catches the memory of her smile in his hand and keeps it to warm him on a rainy day.

"Are you coming?" she asks, holding the door open.

It is such a little thing, but his heart is beating a little too fast as he follows behind her. For a moment, he resents her calm face – the way she is completely unaffected by his presence. Feeling a bit put out that he had to ask permission to join her club, like a recalcitrant schoolboy, he finds himself pausing before he passes her.

"I owe you one, Waldorf," he all but breaths the words onto her cheek.

He knows he has won when her hand adjusts her collar and she clears her throat. "I'm sure you'll find a way to repay me," she says primly, before she blushes at the unintentional suggestiveness of her comment.

He raises an eyebrow, but says nothing because the sight of her blushing is doing something strange to his stomach.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (2:33pm)**_

_**The Empire Hotel, New York**_

There was something so reassuringly familiar about the grin Nate gave her when she entered the penthouse that he and Chuck had referred to as the Bass Cave. When she and Chuck had been together – still the thought carried with it an undeniable sting - there had been a tacit understanding that Blair was a _de facto_ third roommate. In actuality, it had often felt as if Nate were merely a lodger in Chuck and Blair's house. Now, however, Blair felt oddly awkward about entering the place: she couldn't shake the feeling that this was what she had been worth to Chuck. This hotel was worth more to him than their relationship. This hotel had been where he had betrayed her with Jenny Humphrey.

And in this hotel, some French prostitute named Eva had taken her place.

Nonetheless, the concierge at the door had ushered her in without a hint of doubt. Blair felt a sudden surge of warmth at the realization that her name was still on the 'enter at will' list. But, the warm feelings were soon chased away by the sensation of dread that overcame her on the way up to the dreaded penthouse.

"Blair," Nate said eagerly, bounding over to greet her with a warm hug. "Howyadoing?"

"I hope that I'm not disturbing you," she said uncertainly.

"Are you kidding? It's great to see you!" He paused before speaking in a confidential voice. "I haven't seen you much at the hospital lately."

"Yeah," Blair said with a tight smile, wondering whether he expected her to explain herself.

"But hey," he said, brightening. "Serena told me you're coming today…to tell Chuck. I'm glad. We need you for back-up." He cocked his head to the side. "Is that why you're here? You want to go together?"

"No, there's actually something I wanted to get from Chuck's study…for today. If that's okay."

Both of them shifted at the strange shift in the balance of power that had arisen in the penthouse.

"Of course," Nate said quickly. "Go and grab what you need. Do you want a drink or something?"

"Let's have some tea. I'll be right back."

Nate found himself fumbling in the kitchen as Blair busied herself in Chuck's study. He noted that she left the door open, although he had no urge to follow her in. He wondered, idly, whether Chuck would have wanted him to keep an eye on her. They had hardly been on the best of terms before the accident. But, something about the sight of Blair sleeping in that uncomfortable armchair next to Chuck's bed told Nate that no matter how wounded her pride and feelings were from their break-up, Blair still cared deeply for Chuck.

Glancing over his shoulder out of pure habit, he wiped at the tea he had spilt with the arm of his lacrosse jersey. Nothing had given Chuck greater pleasure than leaning against the counter, watching Blair give Nate a stern dressing-down for his more loutish behaviour around the penthouse. Nate had the sneaking suspicion that it was because Chuck loved seeing Blair mad, and there was more chance of him getting…a happy ending…when she wasn't mad at him. Sometimes, when Blair was angry with him, he would ask Nate to leave dirty washing lying around or to stain the upholstery on the couch. Ten minutes after yelling at Nate, Blair could usually be found tugging frantically at Chuck's buttons. Nothing excited her more than humiliating someone.

Perhaps Nate didn't miss the good old days quite as much as he remembered.

He balanced the tea on a tray as best he could, mindful of his guest's discerning tastes. He had even used cups and saucers. When she finally emerged from the study, he saw her stuffing an envelope into her bag, but when she didn't volunteer any further information he didn't ask any questions.

They sat carefully on the couches, Nate glancing at Blair as she stared stonily ahead.

"Is the tea okay?"

"You should put the milk in the cups first," she said automatically. "And allow the tea to percolate adequately before serving it."

"Yeah, right. I'll – uh – bear that in mind."

Silence fell between them once more as Blair studiously avoided his eyes.

"I was actually hoping that I would have a chance to talk to you," Nate said, finally.

"I figured as much."

When he saw that she wasn't going to offer him any further assistance in this endeavour, he pressed bravely on. "I was hoping you might reconsider your whole…not telling Chuck about you and him…you know…dating."

"Have you given him any hints?"

"No," Nate said honestly. "In fact, I don't know if he even realizes that you and I are broken up. But, I _do _think that you have to tell him."

Blair's back was so straight that you could have ruled a straight line using it. "You'll have to forgive me if I find it a bit strange that someone who managed to avoid telling Chuck about his own father's death is lecturing me about offering a selective history of the past three years."

"Well, that's it, isn't it?" Nate said intently. "I mean, Chuck's going to be pretty pissed at me about this whole Bart thing. When he finds out about you two – and you know he'll find out – he's going to be even more pissed."

"Well it's not my responsibility to ensure that Chuck isn't - " she scrunched up her nose in distaste " – _pissed_ at you."

"No, that's not what I'm saying…it's just…" Nate shook his head as if to clear it. "You and I were together for a long time."

Blair started at the sudden change of topic. "What does that have to do with anything?"

"I'm just saying, that we were together a long time," Nate said thoughtfully, rotating his teacup on its saucer as Blair tried to resist the urge to scold him for fidgeting. "And towards the end of it, I thought that we might be together for the long hall, you know? I mean, I asked you to move in with me because I could tell that you and Chuck were in love with each other and I felt like I was losing you and I hated it. But, I really thought that if Chuck kept running and I stuck around we could just pretend things hadn't changed…"

"Nate - "

"No, it's fine," he said quickly. "It's just…we always pretended, didn't we, Blair? I mean, we pretended I didn't have feelings for Serena, that you didn't love Chuck. Even though be both knew…I don't know. I just think that the biggest mistake we made was pretending that things hadn't happened – ignoring the truth."

Blair smiled softly at him, petting him on the arm. "We really did try to make it work. And we had a lot of good times."

Nate peered at her from under his eyelashes. "So did you and Chuck." Her hand whipped away, but before she could stand up to leave, he pressed his own to her wrist. "Listen, I know what he did and even if you never forgive him and you're never even friends again, I just think that you should acknowledge that what you guys had was special." He leaned back in the chair, whistling through his teeth. "If Chuck wasn't quite so good at standing in his own way, you know as well as I do that you'd still be together."

"It doesn't matter what I remember," she found suddenly that her voice was weak and tearful. It was fitting, somehow, that she should sound the way she felt. "He doesn't remember any of it, Nate. You knew Chuck, back then. What would he have had to say about finding out that he'd dated the girl he thinks of as his best friend's girlfriend?"

Nate bit his lip thoughtfully. "You know, I've been trying to figure that out myself."

"What do you mean?"

"You should have seen the way he looked, at the wedding, when he told me that he was in love with you and that's why he'd done what he'd done. I remember it really clearly, because – you know – Chuck _Bass_ talking about love? It makes an impact. And he just seemed so certain and calm about it…I dunno."

"Very eloquent, Archibald," Blair said flippantly, although in reality she was inordinately interested in hearing more about the first time Chuck had told anyone that he loved her. She couldn't help it; it was in her nature to fantasize a scene. She longed for any new fact she could add to the rich tapestry she had concocted.

"Shut up," he grinned, before sobering. "I'm just saying that maybe a lot of that 'I'm Chuck Bass' stuff was just bravado. Maybe I didn't know him as well as I thought I did." Nate glanced at her. "You should tell him about the two of you. Maybe he'll surprise you."

For a moment, he thought he was getting through to her. But, then, her face darkened and she gently removed his hand from her wrist. "I think I've had about as many surprises from Chuck Bass than I can stand." She glanced at the elegant watch on her wrist. "Come along, Nate. We'll be late."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (3:37pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

Chuck had yet to move from the armchair in his hospital room. He scarcely reacted when one of the younger nurses smuggled him some magazines. He seemed to be waiting for something and even he wasn't sure what it was exactly. All he knew was that he needed a shave.

It was not until Nate knocked lightly on the door and let himself in that Chuck realized what it was he had been waiting for. The conversation came back to him the instant he laid eyes on his old friend.

Hadn't it been just a day earlier that Nate had stood there silently when he asked Lily to contact Bart? Hadn't he just stood there like a stunned mullet as the others in the room nodded away at him and promised to call his dead father?

Chuck narrowed his eyes at Nate as Serena filed in behind him.

"Hey man," Nate said, his voice somehow forced and jovial.

"Nathaniel," Chuck responded, coolly. "Serena."

And then, from behind these towering blonde specimens, he caught sight of Blair Waldorf.

Chuck didn't know what it was that compelled his traitorous heart to pound at the sight of her, but he noticed suddenly that she was wearing a headband – something that had been decidedly missing from her head in the last few days. She had also curled her hair into tighter ringlets. Quite simply, she looked much more like the girl he had known than she had since he opened his eyes.

"Waldorf," he said, wondering whether his voice had always sounded so nervous. Blair's face was serious, but he could have sworn that her face softened slightly at the sound of her nickname. Of all three of them, though, she looked the most serious. Her eyes were particularly dark as they examined him where he sat. She missed nothing.

"We brought you some food," Serena said lightly, spreading some coffee and cakes on his depressing little table. She placed a small coffee cup before him – he was almost surprised that she knew he favoured a doppio coffee, before reminding himself that she was his _adopted_ sister. The thought caused him to scowl even harder. "And we thought you might be missing coffee. I know that coffee withdrawal really brings out the worst in you."

"I suppose you're more in Scotch withdrawal, right buddy?" Nate said in that same falsely jovial voice.

On cue, he and Serena laughed. Together they fussed over the table full of snacks. He watched them without comment, stealing glances at Blair who leaned against the doorframe still staring at him intently.

"So what have you been up to today, Chuck?" Serena asked lightly. "Are you feeling okay?"

"I had a rather illuminating conversation with your mother, actually."

A look of realization spread over Blair's face, but Nate and Serena glanced at each other uncertainly. He found suddenly that he couldn't tear his eyes away from the captivating expressions that formed and gave way on Blair's face. There was a fierce sort of storm playing across her features.

"Oh?" Serena said weakly. "What did you talk about?"

"You know," he shrugged malevolently. "_Family_ stuff."

A heavy silence filled the room.

"Chuck - " Serena started.

"I suppose I can see why no one thought it was necessary to tell me," Chuck interrupted. "I mean, Bart was a son-of-a-bitch so no love lost here." He turned to face Nate. "And man, that was some _quality_ lying. Really, well done. But, what I can't understand is why you guys didn't tell me about how loaded I must be these days. I mean, that's all I care about, right?" He tilted his head contemplatively, leaning his elbow on the silk pajamas Nate had brought him. "So I must be pretty fucking loaded these days, right? Although I suppose your gold-digging mother took a cut, right S?"

"Stop it," Blair said softly, but forcefully – stepping forward for the first time since entering. "Don't even think about pushing everyone away again."

To all of their surprise, Chuck did stop talking for an instant. But then, a scowl appeared on his face. For a moment, just a moment, Nate and Serena could only watch as a strange energy zipped between them. If any of them had been in doubt as to whether any of that old connection still lived today between them, it was answered in vivid detail. Blair's face was anything but impassive and Chuck's mouth was a straight line of anger.

In spite of themselves, Serena and Nate pressed themselves against the wall, clearing space for this tacit struggle for dominance. Despite the uncomfortable tension in the room, Serena was oddly gratified to see some trace of the old Waldorf spunk coming to the fore.

Finally, Chuck ended the stalemate. "Don't act like you care, Waldorf."

"Don't act like you _don't_," she retorted. "And don't act like you don't understand that Nate and Lily were in an impossible position. We all saw how you went into a tailspin the first time you found out about Bart. And none of us wanted you to go through that again."

"Well its kind of hard for me to give you merit points for something I don't remember," Chuck spat bitterly.

"I know," Blair said, surprising all of them. "And I know how you feel right now."

Chuck scoffed. "How the hell would you know how I feel?"

She turned her body, slightly, as if she could address this only to the corners of the room and certainly not to his face. But, as she spoke, she found herself walking closer to him, until she was on his side of the bed, so that he could have reached out from his chair and touched her if he'd wanted.

"You feel grief," she said, her chin a little too high to be entirely natural. "And you feel like now you'll never have the chance to prove him wrong, to win the approval that you always wanted from him. You're remembering every horrible thing that he said about you and you're finding reasons to believe him."

Serena realized that Blair was speaking as Chuck's closest confidante. Somewhere during the long nights when Serena had been able to overhear Chuck and Blair speaking in whispers, he must have told her what she was telling him right now. The look on Chuck's face was enough to make Serena's eyes blur with tears. Blair must have seemed like an otherworldly prophet to him, in this moment – and even though he must have resented the way she had reached into his heart and taken these words, he also looked like a man who had seen something truly miraculous.

Feeling oddly like they were intruding on a private scene, she took Nate's hand, almost smiling when he squeezed hers back.

"But even through all of that," Blair continued. "You want him to be wrong. You want him to be wrong."

Chuck shook his head. "I don't know what you're talking about," he said unconvincingly, looking down into his lap.

When Blair reached out to lift his chin up to meet her eyes, it was as if the entire room were drawing breath. Chuck glanced nervously at Nate, searching for some sign of jealousy in his face and noticing for the first time that Serena and Nate's hands were clasped tightly. When he looked back at Blair's face, he saw the strangest expression in her eyes. It was just like when she had kissed him when he woke up.

The words that had spoken so clearly about his feelings seemed to leave her oddly vulnerable to trespass.

"Bart believed in you," she said softly, her hand still under his stubbly chin.

"Bullshit."

"I can prove it," she said, pulling back and reaching into her handbag and handing over a formal legal envelope that she had taken from his safe earlier that day.

Chuck stared down at the envelope, before opening it and reading the contents. It was the letter from Bart, leaving him Bass Industries. And the moment was made still sweeter by the absence of Jack Bass perched like a vulture to steal it away.

When he finished reading it, he tossed it nonchalantly on the bed before hauling himself to his feet.

"Fine," he said dismissively. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to shave."

Hobbling on his injured foot, he walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind him. It wasn't until he struggled over to the small basin with the mirror above it. Leaning heavily on the white porcelain, Chuck found it hard to breathe. Splashing water on his face, he found his chest heaving as if from a great exertion. He unbuttoned his pajama top, hoping to help the flow of air to his lungs.

But, as he looked at himself in the mirror, he frowned at the sight of a small round scar on his chest. Running a finger over it, he noticed that it was red and vivid against his pale chest.

He was still staring at the scar when he heard the door to the bathroom open and close behind him.

Blair was reflected in the glass, and although he briefly considered it, it didn't seem right to ask her to leave.

"What happened here?" he asked, running a finger over his chest.

"You should sit down," she said, gesturing at the bath.

"I need to shave."

"I'll do it for you."

It was possibly the most surprising thing that Chuck had ever heard come from Blair Waldorf's mouth, but he found himself perching obediently on the edge of the tub as she rifled around in the motley collection of personal items Nate had brought him. The visual reminder of Nate's attentive care of him made Chuck feel oddly guilty about treating him so poorly.

"Are they still out there?"

"I told them to leave," Blair said, not needing to be told how he liked his shaving ritual to go. She handled the old-fashioned shaving brush masterly.

It may have been his imagination, but she seemed oddly captivated by the sight of his scar.

"It's a bullet wound," she said finally, setting to work with lathering his cheeks. "You were shot in Prague during summer."

"I really know how to get on with the other kids in the playground, don't I?" Chuck said with a wan smile. "I'm surprised at the straight answer."

"I'm not going to lie to you about your own body," she said simply, carefully focusing on shaving his cheeks. He couldn't have known it, but she had done this very act several times before. She had loved their morning rituals – sharing a bathroom and preening in front of a mirror. It was something neither of them had done before; she was always more confident about herself with Chuck then she had been with Nate. She didn't doubt his desire of her, so she felt more comfortable wearing a face mask in front of him.

In fact, she was much more demure of the two of them. Chuck had relished each new layer of their intimacy. It was so novel for him to accept another person into his life that he almost made a science of it: getting to know every inch of her. He was not satisfied with merely understanding how to make her body respond. He needed to understand how each action corresponded with a thought. So, when they had parted ways so angrily, she had felt strangely like he had retained a few vital pieces of her mind.

_The agony and the ecstasy_ _of loving Chuck Bass._

"To tell you the truth," Blair said lightly. "I've never seen it before." She knew that it was wildly inappropriate, but she couldn't help herself. "May I…" she gestured at his bare skin.

It took him a moment to register that she wanted to touch the scar. His stomach twisted sharply.

"_Yes_," he whispered huskily.

He felt her hand pressed against his chest, over his heart and it was most intensely intimate experience he'd ever had. That he could remember, at least. The strangest part was that it didn't feel unnatural; it felt so perfectly natural that Chuck found his mind alienated from his body. While the warmth of contact made his heart beat too fast – feel too large for his chest – his mind urged him to pull away. But, for the moment, his body won and he stood stock-still under her hands – at her mercy, completely.

"Your father loved you," she breathed the words, so that it felt as if his mind was making conversation with itself.

A slight tremor passed through him as she ran a hand over his now smooth cheek. "My father didn't know what love was."

"Maybe," Blair said softly. "But that doesn't mean he didn't feel it."

He bit his lip and looked away from her; it was too much, this soft expression on her face and the way she looked in the low light that illuminated the dust in the air. He had the strangest feeling that if she pulled away from him, if the contact was suddenly to end that his heart might stop beating altogether. He felt it, and it didn't make a jot of sense. So, he avoided her eyes because he didn't trust what he was seeing.

It didn't matter what he saw, really. Because at that moment, the universe was focused on a single point in the palm of her hand against his bare chest: it was the place that warmed him, and he wanted to hang onto the rhythm of her pulse against all other rhythms. The world might come and go in the tide of a day, but here, right now, this moment – her hand held the future in its palm and told him something he couldn't quite understand about his past.[2]

"What happened," he said, addressing the wall behind the showerhead. "The first time I found out. What did I do?"

"You did what you always do, Chuck. You tried to run away from yourself."

He swallowed hard. "Did it work?"

"For a while," she shrugged, reaching for the clean towel and running it over his chin. She looked down for an instant, as if recalling something very painful.

"Why did it end? Why did I come back?"

It wasn't his imagination; her eyes were sparkling with unshed tears. For some reason, the sight of them created a profound impression on him. He would have liked, for a moment, to reach out and wipe the tear from her cheek. But, it would have been such an uncharacteristic move from him that he feared it might destroy the delicate alchemy of the room: the first time she had given him answers.

She smiled a strange, resigned smile. It seemed so different from the devilish smile she usually gave him, when a plan fell into place and a common enemy was vanquished.

"It ended because things end, Chuck," she said, withdrawing her hand from his chest. "Everything ends eventually." She examined his fresh-shaven features. "You're done."

With that, she stepped back and all contact was lost between them. For a moment, they stood regarding each other – Blair with that knowing, understanding look that drove him insane, and Chuck with a confused, determined look.

"Thank you," he said, as if he couldn't think of anything else to say to her.

She offered him another sad smile. "Let's get you back to the bed."

"If I had a nickel for every time a woman had said that to me…" he said with a ghost of his usual smirk.

Blair shook her head in amusement, allowing him to drape an arm around her shoulders and use her as a human crutch. There, on the bed, was the copy of Bart's will that he had let fall from his hand so carelessly. He didn't want to look at it, so real and official, heavy and burdensome.

Blair seemed to read his mind, when she picked it up, folded it carefully and placed it in his bedside drawer. Then, she lowered him carefully onto the bed, where he looked so lost that her heart constricted at the sight of him. It was so at odds with the man Chuck had become, so innocent and guileless, that Blair found herself standing in the V-shape of his legs, not minding that it was in closer proximity to him than she usually allowed herself these days. He stole a look at her face. There was no indication in it that she was about to run from him again.

"Why does it feel this way?"

Blair's hand quivered as she reached out to touch his face again, causing another alien thrill of sensations to pass through his cheek. "It's grief, Chuck. You need to feel it again. To _actually_ feel it this time."

"No," Chuck said, the words strange and frightening in his mouth. "With you. Why does it feel like this?"

With a start, she pulled her hand back – furious at herself for letting her guard down. But, before she could back away and out of the door, possibly for good this time, he snatched her hand and pressed it to his chest, holding it in place with both of his hands.

Trapped, eyes begging him to just let her go, to stop asking these questions and let her disappear into the crowd. But, his eyes were defiant. She couldn't look away from them, even as her ears registered his words.

"Do you feel that?"

His heart was thundering against his chest – so hard that she imagined she could hear it. And still, his eyes bore into hers, crackling and daring her to look away.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Every time your name comes up, this is what happens. You come in the room and my heart starts pounding until I feel like I'm dying. I don't understand why it feels like this." He broke their intense staring match, shaking his head. "_Tell_ me why it feels like this."

Blair shook her head, unable to form the words. She tried to pull her hand away, but his grip was steadfast. "I don't know why."

"Yes, you do. You know everything. You're the only one who knows everything," he said, finally releasing her hand, which she snatched away as if it were burning.

"I have to go," she said quickly, her voice wavering with tears, heading towards the door of the room.

"No," he said forcefully. "You don't. You need to tell me why we aren't friends anymore. You need to tell me what's going on between us."

"No, I don't," she said, shaking her head. "But, trust me when I say that it is imperative that I get the hell away from you right now."

For a moment, the look of his clear eyes had lulled her into a false sense of security. He might not remember what had happened between them, but it would be a mistake for her to forget what he was capable of. That injured look on his face may make it difficult, but the entire course of their relationship had taught her that the best defence was a strong offence.

The moment they had passed in the bathroom had been no more than habit and the desire to soothe him over the news of his father's death. It was a moment of weakness, certainly. But, now was the time to become strong. Hadn't she pasted him back together enough times? Wasn't it time for her focus on mending the parts of herself that _he_ had broken?

She was almost at the door, when his voice reached her – a whisper, which resonated in her mind like a shout. If she had looked at him, she would have seen his eyes wild and desperate, but she looked only towards the busy halls outside, where life continued without worrying about the latest phase of the war that was Chuck and Blair.

"What did I do to you, Blair?"

Her mouth moved, even though words seemed to form. He was watching closely and could see the exact moment that she closed her feelings off once more. Her features hardened and her hand on the doorframe was as white as Lily's had been.

"Nothing that I shouldn't have expected you to do."

* * *

[1] From _Sex and the City_: _The Movie._

[2] Adapted from Jeanette Winterson, _Written on the Body_

A/N: _I made changed the date of Thanksgiving apparently! Sorry. I was going to continue onto the revelation of C/B's relationship, but I decided to save it for next chapter. This one was already a pretty long one! As always, your reviews overwhelm me and make my fingers type faster. I will try to update _Lightness and Weight_ before I update this one – we're nearing the end of that series as well!_


	5. Chapter 5: If You Forget Me

A/N: I am sorry for the delay – but I spent Christmas and New Years in Brisbane, far from computers. After reading all your amazing reviews, I was anxious to update ASAP; I personally hate waiting a long time between chapters. But, I should warn you that this is a turning-point chapter; the action really gets started next chapter.

_Between the Shadow and the Soul_

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Five:** If You Forget Me

…_If suddenly _

_you forget me_

_do not look for me,_

_for I shall already have forgotten you…_

…_But,_

_if each day,_

_each hour,_

_you feel that you are destined for me_

_with implacable sweetness,_

_if each day a flower_

_climbs up to your lips to seek me, _

_ah my love, ah my own,_

_in me all that fire is repeated,_

_in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,_

_my love feeds on your love, beloved, _

_and as long as you live it will be in your arms_

_without leaving mine. _

- Extracts from "If You Forget Me" by Pablo Neruda

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (4:10pm)**_

_**The Waldorf Penthouse, New York**_

Blair is losing her mind.

This is the only conclusion she can come to as she bursts through her elevator doors, into the cool, cavernous space of the apartment in which she grew up.

The size of the entrance, with its striking marble columns and the arch of a staircase had never intimidated her with its size; if anything it had been too small to house the vision she had of her glamorous life in the future. It would have taken a space twice as large as this to contain fierce little Blair Waldorf with her headband as her crown jewels.

Now, though, large spaces make her feel small and fragile. She felt herself betraying those many instructions her mother had given her on how to comport herself – "_Shoulders back, eyes forward. Like a conqueror. Like a queen."_

For a moment, she stands in the centre of the marble floor and draws in two breaths. She listens to hear whether Serena is lurking somewhere. She tries to make out the sound of Dorota being industrious.

Only when she hears nothing does she allow herself to lean on the table and try to catch her breath. She knows she is hyperventilating and with each breath she is convinced that she will come completely undone.

She looks around for something to focus on: to find the point of stability in a world that is shaking violently.

There is a note, folded in half and standing up like a tent, sitting on the table. The words _Blair Waldorf_ are scrawled in a confident mess that for a breathless moment reminds her of Chuck's.

When she opens it, however, she finds that it was the gentleman she had met earlier that day:

_I found you_. _Let's celebrate over dinner. 7pm at Asiate._

_- Nicolas Van Den Berg_

She reads the note twice, before folding it and placing it back on the table.

It happens just the way it did in the bookshop this morning: memories of Chuck - _her_ Chuck: beautiful, aloof, maddeningly cocky and woeful – flood into her vast entrance hall.

He is leaning on the column at the bottom of the stairwell, waiting for her to finish readying herself for one of their dates. He is standing to attention, talking to Eleanor before completely losing the thread of his conversation when he catches sight of Blair in her teasingly sexy dress. He is asking if they have the house to themselves before slamming her into the wall and having his way with her, altering its chemistry so that to this day that patch of wall always makes her blush, always represents the abandon with which they desired each other.

She has just left his hospital room – just fled from his curious questions and his racing heart. So, why does she feel so desolate inside at the thought of him? Why does she feel like sinking to the floor and weeping wretchedly?

_It feels like mourning. _

The thought comes upon her so shockingly and so suddenly that almost immediately she tries to underplay the sensation. Surely, that was an over-statement. But, the more time she thinks about it, she realizes that it is true: she is mourning the loss of the Chuck Bass who loved her, who had disappeared entirely. He had managed to widow her, while still drawing breath.

Worse than that: he managed to haunt her while sitting in a hospital room eating cups of pudding. The strange recollection of their love that seemed to be harboured in his body was only making it worse; while he might take the measure of his feelings and feel an unquenchable desire to figure out what had passed between them, she knew where this path led. She knew that their story ended in heartbreak.

There, standing in an empty room, feeling wrung out and struggling to control her shaking hands, she could have been the final line of their story: _Alone in the world, the girl who had been foolish enough to fall in love stood in an empty room and trembled. _

Blair smiles to herself, before amending the thought: _Alone in the world, the girl in the gorgeous shoes who had been foolish enough to fall in love stood in an empty room and trembled. _

The spectre of Chuck laughs along with her; he had always enjoyed her gallows humour.

She remembers, suddenly, that they had already had a conversation quite like this after seeing all eight hours of the stage show of _The War of the Roses_. Oddly entranced by the story of five generations of power struggles, Chuck had peppered her with questions about the plays, about Shakespeare in general.

He had pored over her copies of the Collected Works of Shakespeare, engrossed until late into the night. It was a strange turnabout; usually when she recommended a book to him, he would only read it when she threatened not to stay over until he completed it. He would sit petulantly on the couch, one hand straying up her bare leg and the other unenthusiastically balancing a book on his knee.

But, _Antony and Cleopatra, Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, _and _Julius Caesar_ – he read them as if they held great secrets. He read them as if he were reading himself.

Finally, she'd had to all but jump him to get his attention.

Even as they lay tangled in each other's arms on the floor, he had traced the words he had read on her bare skin.

"_Lord, we know what we are, but not what we may be,"_ he whispered, in time with his finger as it traced its way across her stomach.[1]

"_Hamlet_?" she'd asked, breathless as her muscles contracted at the maddening slow progress of his hand.

He settled his dark eyes upon her face; he always listened to her so closely, so intensely, as if she were a fascinating puzzle. "If Shakespeare wrote a play about us, would it be a tragedy or a comedy?"

Blair laughed lightly, reaching out tracing his jaw. "I prefer the history plays, to be honest. Great families, born to rule and taking up arms." She bit her lip as his hands moved further down her stomach. "Like in _Richard II_, when the queen asks that she and Richard be exiled together and Northumberland says, 'that were some love, but little policy.' It appeals to my sensibilities."[2]

He smirked at that, but Blair could tell that the issue was still preying on his mind. "The comedies are farces, really," he said contemplatively. "All the great love is in the tragedies."

He may have been lying on his side with her flush against him, but at that moment he seemed too remote to reach out and touch. His eyes were focused on a distant point, wounded by his realization that the measure of love was loss.

But, that had been during the time when she had not been afraid to meet him in the remotest corners of his mind, confident that she could lead him back to her. So, she had lifted herself up on an elbow and kissed him on the mouth.

"So, we'll be a history play," she said confidently.

"What? So all we have to deal with is familial betrayal and ruling our kingdom under the threat of insurrection?" He paused, before meeting her eyes once more. "Actually, that sounds about right."

"And then to exile," she said, trailing her kisses further down his neck. "Together."

He had kissed her then, with so much passion that she had been taken aback. Only now, in retrospect, did she see that he had been right in his first guess: they were destined for tragedy. But, then, it had seemed as if it were possible for them to quite simply step into each other's skins and become one entity.

It seems a lifetime ago, now. And certainly, Chuck would have no recollection of how convinced he had been about the force of their love.

It is a moment of perfect clarity, and Blair realizes to her surprise that the trembling has passed. She looks down at her hands, still pressed flat against the entrance table, and sees that her knuckles are not inordinately white. She finds that her breath is even, and that without her noticing, the images of Chuck that had surrounded her are nowhere to be seen.

There was something that had always annoyed her about Shakespeare's heroines: their love would pass through the veil into death, and they would fling themselves after them. Whether before or after, directly or indirectly, all these women died at their lover's hands.

Blair Waldorf would not go the same way. She would write herself a new act.

After all, she is a history play, damn it.

* * *

_**15 January, 2007 (3:15pm)**_

_**Constance School Gates, New York**_

_I'm Chuck Bass._

The argument is going around in circles again and it always reaches this point before starting again.

The problem is Blair Waldorf, who even now stands on the school steps laughing maliciously with Kati and Iz. One hand holds her autumn cape around her shoulders as she gives that patented Waldorf disdainful look to one of mere mortals who spill out of the school at her back. The hand that clutches the fabric over shoulders also holds a phone.

A small smirk flits across Chuck's face as he watches in the shadows, leaning against the wall and smoking, as if he were waiting for one of his groupies, instead of clutching an envelope under his elbow as he spends yet another afternoon playing handmaiden to Queen Waldorf.

That mobile phone. It reminds him that she has a chink in her armor.

_There but for the grace of Gossip Girl goes Blair Waldorf_.

He knows her secrets – at least some of them – and it would take no more than one text message to bring her down. He has always been one of Gossip Girl's most favoured sources; his ability to substantiate any claims he made using his PI had given him an unimpeachable reputation with the unseen harpy.

He could take it all away.

But he doesn't; he would never dream of it. It is only in these moments, when she makes him wait with the information she has requested of him, that he considers it. It is only when he finds himself stooping that he remembers what Gossip Girl has written about him. Chuck Bass, the Boy King. Chuck Bass, the Insider. In bedrooms around New York City, teenagers read about his exploits and dreamed that they would one day be as young and as rich as he is.

But, Gossip Girl is about dreams. This is reality. In reality, Chuck Bass always stands just outside the warm circle that Blair finds herself in right now. He may smirk and put on airs, but in reality he can't for the life of him figure out why Nate and _Blair Waldorf_ count him as a member of their inner circle. If he were ever to try to take it away from her, she would see to it that Nate would be suddenly completely unavailable to him. She would make it her mission to ensure that he suffered ten times more than she had. It was just her nature.

_There but for the grace of Blair Waldorf go I._

These battle lines clearly drawn in the internal landscape of his mind, it is easy to make excuses. It is easy to ignore the fact the way he felt when her eyes lit up over some nasty little secret he unearthed. It is easy to ignore the fact that he would never have waited outside the school gates for anyone else. It is easy to ignore the slight swell of disappointment that came when Nate joined them at lunch.

He feels a foul mood come upon him when she passes through the gates, noting the way her expression shifts when it is just the two of them. There is no artifice, there is no faux sweetness. There is only Blair Waldorf and the wonder and horror that she evokes.

He finds her magnificent, and it makes him even more pissed off.

"Bass," she says with a wan smile. "Skulking agrees with you."

He exhales and throws his cigarette into the gutter. "Waiting doesn't."

She lifts her chin at his tone, as if preparing for a fight. "I was detained," she says simply. "Do you have it?"

"Of course I have it," Chuck responds dismissively, holding out the envelope so that she has to take a few steps towards him to take it in hand. When she grasps the top, he pulls the bottom so that she is suddenly in close proximity to him. "It was almost beneath me."

She swallows and he can see the movement in the fine column of her neck. He likes throwing her off balance like this. It happens so rarely. She can't help but look at him, with their faces so close together and nothing but an envelope between them.

It feels illicit, somehow, and he is glad. Whatever they are these days – co-conspirators? Partners? – it is hidden and embarrassing. There is no excuse for it, not for him. He is Chuck Bass, damn it. Not some courier.

"I'll try to think of something more interesting for you next time," she says smoothly, her voice even as the muscles of her neck work.

"See that you do," he responds, releasing his hold on the envelope and allowing her to back up a few steps. To his surprise, she stands there examining him as he pulls out his cigarette holder and lights another.

"Bass?" she says softly.

"Waldorf," he mimics.

"Thank you."

He looks down at the ground between them and then looks back at her face. For an insane instant, he wants to respond with one of those typical platitudes that _other people_ use with each other: 'you're welcome' or 'it's my pleasure'. He catches himself in time and sends a smirk in her direction.

"I'll see you later," he says hoarsely.

She smiles at him, and turns on her heels back to the grounds of Constance – undoubtedly to some resume padding club or committee. But, he cannot even formulate a rude comment. He is alone on the curb when the smile hits him square in the jaw.

It dawns on him: a smile is his payment. That is what she feels he deserves. He should be furious at the realization, but he for a moment he can't hide from reality. A smile from Blair Waldorf makes him feel like Midas.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (5:30pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

The moment Blair had disappeared through that wretched door, Chuck had slipped into a deep and formless reverie.

It would have been inaccurate to say that he was lost in thought, because the expression suggested a level of directed thought that Chuck quite simply could not claim. Rather, his thoughts drifted without discipline, lost in those memories he jealousy guarded and those painful thoughts that refused to abate.

He had developed a strange, disquieting sort of antidote to the repeated thoughts of his father's most unkind words to him. Whenever he would remember the way had felt, sitting at a sullen table with Bart, raging silently at the injustice he perceived in his father's grave disapproval of his every act, unbidden thoughts of Blair Waldorf would leap to his defence.

One moment he would be swallowing a lump in his throat at the memory of Bart's resentment of his survival and Evelyn Bass's demise, and the next he would be on a balcony at Blair's side, exchanging quips and schemes while a party raged inside. He would remember the painful tightness of Bart's jaw on the morning of his birthdays, back when they used to cohabit, but then the thought of Blair laughing and winding his scarf around her finger and teasing him would demand his full attention.

But all those memories, tiny and inconsequential as they had been were pushed rudely aside by the newest memories he had acquired: Blair standing in the V of his legs earlier this afternoon, Blair with her hand pressed against his chest so that he fancied she could reach in and hold his heart in her hand, Blair looking at him with that fierce, tender look that seemed to pain her so deeply and caused him so much terrifying joy.

But this most of all: Blair's ragged breath when she pressed her lips to his.

It was like trying to remember the name of a song; sometimes he thought his tongue was dying to pronounce the words that would solve the mystery of how he felt when he saw her.

And at others, the answer was no closer than the distant moon that he hadn't bothered to look at out of his hospital window.

Sitting in the pent of the swirling memories that battled for dominance in his head, Chuck found himself staring rather blankly straight ahead. In fact, it took a full thirty seconds for him to realize that there was someone standing in the doorway.

"Oh, uh, sorry," the dark-haired boy said nervously, tapping his fingers on his jeans. "I didn't want to, uh, interrupt your…sitting and staring at nothing, or anything…"

Chuck sighed theatrically, taking in the boy's vaguely ironic smile and the expensive plaid shirt that was masquerading as a thrift-store bargain. When he spoke, his voice was a rich tapestry of disdain. "Please don't tell me that we're members of an indie rock band, because after the day I've had I might just be forced to off myself."

The boy laughed, looking quite surprised at himself. "That couldn't be further from the truth."

"Well," Chuck said archly but without much interest. "That's a relief, I suppose." He scratched his face, adjusting himself more regally in his hospital bed. "So what? Are we - " he searched about in his mind for the proper word, " – _friends."_

The boy cocked his head to the side, allowing himself to take a few more steps into the room. When Chuck didn't immediately order him out, he seemed confident enough to take a few more steps. Standing next to the bed, the boy looked at him with thinly veiled interest.

"Do you feel like we're friends?" he was genuinely interested.

Chuck wrinkled his nose, resisting the urge to roll his eyes at the gratuitous use of the word 'feel.' Although, the boy had inadvertently stumbled onto a fairly accurate observation: Chuck did seem to have an almost chemical response to the people around him, showing that his body remembered things that eluded his memory. He looked at this conscientious newcomer and tried to take the measure of his emotions.

"I feel," he said slowly. "Irritated, disdainful, and just a little bit…" he paused, frowning at himself. "Guilty?"

It took a moment for Dan to recover from that revelation. For a moment, he furrowed his brow deeply. Before shaking his head as if to clear it. "You don't remember me, then?" he finally said. "I guess that's not really surprising."

"This running commentary thing," Chuck said irritably. "Do you keep that up all the time? Because if so I may need to ask the nurse for some morphine."

"As long as she has enough for me as well," the boy paused, considering for a moment, before sticking out his hand. "Dan Humphrey."

Chuck stared at his proffered hand in distaste, before he realized the significance of the name. "Wait," he said slowly. "_Humphrey_, was it?"

Dan frowned. "You know, we did actually go to school together for a few years…"

"And now you're Lily's stepson," he said with an amused smirk. "If your father has one-eighth of your dress sense then I'd say it's been rather a big trade down for her."

Dan had to remind himself that Chuck was already in hospital, so punching him might be considered to be poor form. So, he crosses his arms over his chest and tries to resist the urge to introduce _this_ Chuck to the right first that had already made satisfying contact with his jaw on two occasions.

"I can assure you that you've already made all these wise cracks and more when we were living together," Dan said, imitating Chuck's bored expression. "So, why don't you just let me know where Lily is so that we can go back to not acknowledging each other?"

_When we were living together._ The comment echoed in his ears. So, it seemed that at least part of what Lily had said to him was true. After Bart's death he did seem to have taken up playing families with Lily's rebound husband. Of course, that didn't change anything about the way she had lied to him since his awakening. The important thing, really, was that this upwardly mobile hipster may have valuable information. Of course, that all depended on whether he had been taken into Blair Waldorf's cone of silence.

"I'm afraid that Lily and I had a disagreement this morning," Chuck said lightly, with a jarring formality. "I recommend that you call Serena."

Dan Humphrey really had a hopeless poker face. The sheer number of conflicting emotions that passed across his face at the sound of her name spoke volumes to Chuck. Obviously, the guy had some creepy _Flowers in the Attic_ crush on his step-sister. And, judging by the dispirited look on Dan's face, it was an unrequited love.

"Serena and I…well, it's complicated."

_It's not complicated,_ Chuck thought. _She's out of your league. _

But, Chuck knew that if he were going to get anything out of the boy, he'd have to avoid blatantly insulting him. "Complicated is certainly the word of the day."

Dan nodded, almost sympathetically. "Yeah…Lily mentioned something about you being…you know…"

"Memory-challenged?" Chuck dead-panned.

"Something like that, yeah."

An awkward silence fell over them and Dan started eyeing the exits. Obviously, Chuck was going to have to get creative with the truth if he ever wanted to get to the bottom of his strange feelings and Blair's strange actions.

"Some things you just don't forget, though," Chuck shrugged, lying through his teeth. "I mean, the big things, like my father's death and Lily getting remarried – all that's still up here - " he pointed at his head, wondering idly whether he was overplaying it. "It's just the small things…"

"Like my very existence?" Dan asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Exactly," Chuck responded with a smirk. "Those little things that I don't remember…well, I guess it's hard for the people around me."

"I can imagine," he said, trying and failing to mask his interest. "It must be frustrating…having everyone around you, uh, know more about your life than you do."

Chuck stole a sidelong glance at Dan's face. There was something so compassionate about the boy, so irritatingly unguarded, that made Chuck see how easy this extraction of information could be. He had the aura of curiosity that defined someone with (Chuck struggled not to grimace at the thought) _artistic_ aspirations. He was undoubtedly fascinated by the concept of someone in his life suffering from amnesia. No matter what his personal views of Chuck were, it was just too fertile a ground for him to simply walk away without hearing more. Chuck would have to give him something in order to get something in return.

He avoided Dan's eyes for a moment, lost in thought. What _did_ it feel like? Obviously, the desire to know everything about what had happened was a near constant irritation, a near constant drive. But, he couldn't exactly say that to Dan. It would expose the extent of his ignorance.

That was what it felt like, really. He felt like a little kid, sitting at the grown-up's table and not understanding a word of it. He felt the frustration that a child must, when a word is on the tip of his tongue but he cannot get it out. It was the way he felt when he looked at Blair. There was a word for what he was feeling, but he had forgotten it. She knew it, too. And they both hated him for his inability to remember.

"It's like I'm constantly disappointing people," Chuck said in a strange, thick voice that he barely recognized as his own. "And I can see in their faces that I'm not who I used to be. It's like…" He paused, trying to find the exact way of putting it. "I am not what I am."

"You've read_ Othello_?" Dan asked with rather unflattering surprise.

"I have no idea," Chuck responded darkly, scarcely noticing that Dan had taken a seat next to him.

"I don't think you're disappointing people," Dan said gently. "I mean, maybe they're sad that you can't remember times that were significant to them. But, I _know_ how worried everyone was when you were unconscious. It looked bad for a while there. And I know that not one of the people who care about you would rather that you had died than that you would forget a few things."

To Chuck's utter surprise, he found himself oddly comforted by these words. When he spoke, he wasn't even thinking of his plan to grill Dan for information.

"I don't think Blair Waldorf would say the same thing if you asked her today," Chuck said glumly, his skin burning at the recollection of her touch.

"Well you can't blame her, Chuck," Dan said carefully, his face still the picture of sympathy. "I mean, I know you guys had broken up before the accident, but everyone could tell that she still had feelings for you. So, things were always going to be…"

Dan stopped short the instant he saw Chuck's shocked face.

"Excuse me?" Chuck said faintly, the blood pounding in his ears and blackness playing at the sides of his vision. "Did you say we'd _broken-up_? As in we were…what did you say?"

Dan quickly stood up and started backing towards the exit, "And I'm getting the feeling I've spoken out of turn. So, I'm just going to go and hurl myself of a bridge…"

He'd almost made it to the door, when Chuck seemed to gain complete control over his shocked features. With a glare, he gestured at the seat that Dan had just vacated.

"Sit your ass down and start from the beginning," he barked.

His tone was so imperious that Dan actually found himself stopping his retreat. "I don't know whether I should say anything more," Dan said miserably, silently cursing Lily for not answering her telephone when Dan was in the midst of Thanksgiving preparations. It was a stressful time of year. "I should probably just go and finish stuffing my turkey…"

"Humphrey," Chuck said flatly, "If you don't sit down here and explain what the hell you meant, I am going to tell the nurse that you tried to smother me with a pillow when I was asleep. You'll spend Thanksgiving being traded like cigarettes by beefy Hell's Angels in prison."

Dan found himself sitting down in the chair, wondering idly whether it might be better to let himself get arrested than to sit through a Chuck Bass-style interrogation.

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (5:45pm)**_

_**The Empire Hotel, New York**_

"I feel weird about this, Nate," Serena said doubtfully, poking at the couch with her toe.

"We're doing him a favour," Nate explained for the umpteenth time.

"It feels wrong."

Nate glanced over at her. She had sounded, for a moment, like the girl she had been at Constance when she came back from boarding school. Even now, he remembered the way she had been with Dan – so certain that people could better themselves, so certain that love could last forever.

It had been a time when he had felt lost. He had been pushing Blair away, right into the arms of his best friend. He had been starting to realize that his parents were human after all, and just as damaged and imperfect as any other humans.

Through it all, he had been convinced that Serena Van Der Woodsen could save him. Because she was _good_. Because she was trying so hard to be a better person than she had been. She made Nate want to be better, too.

But, when he looked at her, he saw that she had not followed Chuck's lead and returned to a previous incarnation. Her hair was pulled back into one of her severe plaits, and red, long-sleeved dress was more womanly than girlish. She may have been a precocious child, but there had been an odd innocence about her in their final years of high school. It was only since leaving school that she had developed into a multi-faceted, vexing woman.

When they had finally gotten together, he had seen it clearly for the first time. All of those bad decisions she had made with men – Tripp sprang to mind instantly, making Nate scowl at the recollection – had taken a toll. She was more worldly than she had been before.

Nate, who had fallen in love with the girl, didn't quite know what to make of the woman.

"I know it does," he said finally, cutting away his eyes. "But it's the only way."

She seemed to accept his point, because she came over to the shelf he was currently scouring.

"Chuck would kill us if he knew what we were doing," she commented, lifting a framed picture of Chuck and Blair from its position in pride of place on the shelf. She wondered, briefly, how it had felt for Eva to live in this house, when Blair's eyes followed her every move from a picture frame on the shelf. It may have been camouflaged amongst other pictures of friends and family, but Serena was surprised to find that Chuck hadn't moved it.

Nate shrugged. "I don't want him to come back here and be inundated with things he doesn't remember."

"Well, then I suppose we should be looking in his bedroom."

"Look who's getting into the spirit of things," Nate laughed. "Let's do it."

They entered Chuck's bedroom, looking around and trying to figure out where to start. The bedroom was surprisingly sparse; Serena noticed that half of the books that had been on the low bookshelf opposite the bed had disappeared.

"What happened here?" she asked, bending down to run her finger over the few titles that remained.

"Pretty much all the books in the house belonged to Blair," Nate shrugged. "Chuck and I are more into collecting shot glasses than books. But, it was nice to have them around, I guess."

Serena read between the lines of that comment and offered him a glum smile. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"Anything," he responded, as he perched on the edge of the bed and opened Chuck's drawers.

"I thought they'd last forever."

Nate looked up with a start. "Chuck and Blair?"

"Yeah," she said sadly. "I mean, they took so long to get together. I thought their story was going to be epic. You know, spanning years and continents. I thought they'd ruin each other's lives and there'd be bloodshed and then they'd come together again."[3] She paused, looking at Nate curiously. "Didn't you?"

He thought for a moment, still digging around the drawer. "I guess I never really thought about it. I mean I thought they were good together, you know? I never really…"

But, just what Nate 'never really' Serena was not to know, because at that moment, his hand struck something that seemed to shock him.

Wordlessly, he pulled out the black velvet box that Serena had seen with Blair in Paris. She almost urged Nate not to open it, but a part of her longed to see it again. It was a morbid reminder of how close her best friend had been to the happily ever after that she had dreamed of. It was a reminder that for all his cynicism and darkness, Chuck had been willing to love her forever.

"Wow," Nate said when his eyes fell on the achingly beautiful Harry Winston ring. He glanced at Serena. "I guess Chuck agreed with you."

She sat entranced at the sight of the diamond. "You didn't know he was going to propose?"

"No," Nate said, almost bitterly. "He kept that secret pretty good."

With that, he snapped the box shut and placed it on the bedside table. The moment he shut the box, Serena's hypnosis ended and she took in the desolate slump of Nate's shoulders.

"Nate," she said gently. "You're his best friend."

"And yet," Nate said in a misleadingly light voice. "I'm the only one in the room who is surprised by that ring."

"I saw it in Paris," Serena said gently, sitting next to him on the bed so that their legs brushed against each other.

Nate lifted his head curiously. "He had it with him?"

"No," Serena sighed. "Those guys in Prague…they were trying to mug him. They took his wallet and everything, but when they tried to take the ring…well he fought back. That's why they shot him."

"Oh Jesus, Chuck," Nate shook his head, pressing his palms to his eyes.

"You know," Serena said contemplatively, her hands pressed between her knees as Nate continued to hide behind his hands. "I have been trying to measure it out…what Chuck's lucky not to remember and what he is missing out on by forgetting."

"And?"

"I'll let you know when I figure it out," she said with a smile. Then, she pulled him to his feet. "Come with me. We need a drink. And maybe some pop-tarts."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (6:00pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

Dan was almost enjoying the sight of Chuck pacing furiously in front of him. The image of Chuck so deeply disquieted by the news that he and Blair Waldorf had _dated_ was amusing enough in its own right, but it was compounded by the fact that Chuck's leg was still set in an orthopedic boot, so his journeys back and forth were somewhat hindered.

"I don't understand," Chuck said, exhaling through his teeth and running his hand through his hair. "I don't understand."

"Is it really _that_ shocking?" Dan asked, his legs stretched out in front of him.

Chuck didn't dignify that question with a response, shaking his head and squeezing the bridge of his nose. Finally, he sat down on the bed and faced Dan.

"Explain this to me again," he said, focusing intensely.

"I honestly don't know how else to say it," Dan groaned. "You and Blair dated. For like a year or something."

Chuck ran his hand through his hair for the umpteenth time. He was starting to look like someone had electrified him. "So, she and Nate break-up at the end of high school…"

"Well, the second time, yeah," Dan shrugged, stifling a grin when Chuck massaged his temples.

"They broke up before that?" he asked curiously.

"Uh, yeah. Well, actually a couple of times. They broke up, then you guys started hooking up - "

"Me and _Blair Waldorf?_" Chuck asked incredulously.

"No," Dan retorted. "You and Nate."

Chuck ignored him, still trying to make sense of the revelations. "And when you say 'hooking up', you mean…?" He gestured ambiguously before his face.

"I honestly have no idea what that means."

"_Sex_, Humphrey."

"Uh," Dan grinned. "No, thank you. But nice of you to offer." At the sight of Chuck's face, however, he sighed. "Yes, I am sad to say that you and Blair Waldorf have sex. Lots of it. In really inappropriate places, actually. I mean, I don't know what it is about coat check rooms that the two of you find so irresistibly arousing, but it's just not that considerate of you to…"

Somewhere in the course of Dan's babbling, Chuck had lowered his head to his knees as if he were hyperventilating.

"Are you okay?"

"I think my head's about to explode," Chuck responded.

"You really didn't know any of this, did you?"

"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock."

"Wow," Dan said somberly. "Poor Blair."

Chuck looked up at that, resting his elbows on his knees. "I think I'm pretty clearly the victim here."

Dan cracked a smile. "I don't know…I mean she still has to live with the memory of you naked…"

At that, Chuck sprang to his feet once more. "Okay, I need you to explain it to me again."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (6:50pm)**_

_**The Palace Bar, New York**_

Eric Van Der Woodsen was bone-wearingly tired.

He had never truly appreciated what that meant until his newly fashioned family, quietly and with very little fuss, imploded. It was strange now to look back at how it had been, the night of Lily and Rufus' impromptu Loft wedding. There was no denying how right it felt, for all of them to be gathered so informally. It had seemed like the satisfying sigh at the end of a romantic film.

That night, it had seemed as if things were coming together for all of them: finally a family that could withstand Lily's casual relationship with the truth, Rufus' tendency towards righteous indignation, and even Serena and Dan's messy personal history. One of his best friends had become his sister and he had a stepfather who actually cared about him.

But most of all, he had been cocooned in the safe embrace of Chuck and Blair.

Chuck had always held a special place in his heart, as the cool, accepting older brother who defended him without judgement and without question. When he and Blair had finally gotten together, it had been a time of particular loneliness for Eric. Serena had disappeared once more, Jenny was preparing for her ascent to the throne of Constance, and Lily and Rufus were too wrapped up in each other to spend much time worrying about Eric.

And Eric never wanted people to worry about him.

Without making a big thing of it, without asking permission, Blair and Chuck had taken him under their care. At those big, stuffy events that Eric knew they both loved, Blair would gesture eagerly for him to sit next to her, assuring him that she was desperate for company and that he would be saving her from a crashing bore to her left. Chuck would summon Eric into his new living quarters and insist that he needed someone worthy to share a bottle of Scotch with.

He surrendered to it, gladly. And, soon enough, he had come to depend on them.

On the night of Lily and Rufus' wedding, the three of them had gone up onto the roof (at Chuck's suggestion, of course). Chuck was uncommonly elated – Eric had the sneaking suspicion that it had something to do with the meaningful look that had passed between him and Blair during the wedding ceremony – with a bottle of champagne in one hand and three glasses in the other.

He had wrapped his arm around Eric's neck and toasted to brothers and lovers and family now and in the future, kissing Blair soundly on the mouth at that. Eric had seen it on Blair's face, even as she laughed at him and made snippy comments about his drinking habits: she would have married him on the spot if he'd asked her.

Of course, that was before the mess and the bloodshed of their Great War.

Without Blair, Chuck had reverted to his worst old ways, drinking and whoring around. He had no time for family past, present or future. Blair had tried to maintain the contact she'd had with Eric during the happy times, but he could sense that his presence just reminded her of the way things had been. It brought him no pleasure to hurt her, so he quietly declined her invitations and tried not to hear the relief in her voice. Even after he had returned from France with Eva, he had been transformed and Eric had found Chuck 2.0 to be an insincere, shoddy version of the original.

Sometimes, he wondered whether he might be madder at Chuck than Blair was. Serena had informed Eric that Blair had lived and slept next to his bed throughout his coma. Eric had been tempted to go and see for himself, but resisted for fear that the sight might spark an ember of hope in his breast that had been extinguished after the Chuck and Jenny fiasco.

So, he hadn't gone to visit Chuck in the hospital; he scarcely saw the point. If Lily and Serena were right, there was no point. Chuck hadn't particularly known him or cared for him before Lily and Bart got engaged. _This _Chuck didn't know him at all.

Eric picked his way through the crowd in the bar, until he saw what he was looking for: Lily Humphrey-Bass-Van-Der-Woodsen, drowning her sorrows in gin martinis.

She was, as ever, well presented and self-contained, but Eric could see from the strange set of her eyes and the way she was blinking to clear her vision that she'd had too much to drink.

There had been an uncomfortable pause on the line when Dan had asked Eric where Lily might be, and Eric had archly responded that he should check the local bars. It was something none of them acknowledged: the earlier and earlier drinking, the way she reached for wine whenever things became uncomfortable.

_WASPS and their gin_, Eric thought morosely as he hurried over to the bar.

When he came into Lily's line of vision, she seemed delighted to see him. Pressing both her hands to his cheeks, she smiled at the disinterested bartender.

"This is my gorgeous son," she said proudly.

"I thought your son was in hospital?" the bartender asked in that typically bored tone as he cleaned a glass.

"I'm the other one," Eric said, with just a hint of bitterness. "The one she's _actually_ related to."

Lily pulled back, withdrawing her affection at a great speed. Eric would never have admitted it, but he missed the feeling of his mother's undivided attention. He even missed the feeling of her oddly cool hands pressed against his warm cheeks.

"Please don't start, Eric," she said tiredly. "I had a rather upsetting day, and I came here to relax."

Eric frowned. "Why upsetting?"

"Charles found out about Bart," she sighed. "He did _not_ take it well. He threatened to call security on me, so I left."

"Chuck found out about Bart?" Eric asked, all bitterness fled from his voice as his tone turned to one of worry.

Lily stared contemplatively into her now empty glass. "I have no idea how it happened. I'm going to have to have a serious conversation with the Chief of Medicine at Lennox Hill."

He shook his hand in front of the bartender when the man made as if to give her another martini. Then, scooping up Lily's handbag, Eric offered her his hand. "Come on," he said forcefully. "Let me take you home."

"Why are you in such a hurry?" she asked, looking longingly at her seat.

Eric avoided her eyes as he steered her towards the exit. "Because I have somewhere I have to be."

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (6:58pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York**_

"You're now officially holding me against my will," Dan commented.

"And you're officially deluded if you think I care," Chuck retorted.

"This is just so pointless. You wig out the minute I get to the fact you dated. And to be honest, Chuck, there isn't a lot more I can really tell you. I mean…do you really want to hear all of this from me?"

"No, Humphrey," Chuck spat, pacing back and forth and throwing his arms up in frustration. "You're the last person I wanted to hear this from, but unfortunately all my _actual_ friends are conspiring to keep me out of the loop. Which is made even easier because I don't have a fucking phone, let alone access to the sort of money it would take to start getting a really effective bribe down pat. And you of _all _people should understand, Humphrey – you were the one who was pissed off as hell when we wouldn't let you see Serena after Georgina came back and she was flipping out because of killing that guy…"

They both froze.

"Chuck," Dan said gently. "Did you just remember something?"

For a moment, Chuck stood wavering on his feet, running a hand over his temple before raising his eyebrows slightly at Dan. "I'm pretty sure I'm about to pass out."

Right on cue, he fell to the ground as Dan darted forward to catch him.

* * *

[1] Hamlet, Act IV, Scene 5.

[2] Act V, Scene 1.

[3] Based on Logan's speech to Veronica in _Veronica Mars_.

A/N: As indicated at the beginning, this was the turning-point chapter. Not a lot of action, but that should change next chapter. It will open with the NJBC converging on Chuck's hospital room – but this should be the last section set in the hospital as we skip forward a bit. Probably a few more chapters to go though. Hope you're still enjoying it.


	6. Chapter 6: Clenched Soul

**Author's Note:** I am so sorry for the delay in updating; since I last posted, I've moved inter-state, started full-time work, and begun studying for the bar exam. Thank you so much for your reviews – I hope a nice long chapter will make up for the unforgivably long delay!

_Between the Shadow and the Soul_

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Six:** Clenched Soul

_We have lost even this twilight_

_No one saw us this evening hand in hand_

_While the blue night dropped on the world._

_I have seen from my window_

_The fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops._

_Sometimes a piece of sun_

_Burned like a coin in my hand._

_I remembered you with my soul clenched_

_In that sadness of mine that you know._

_Where were you then?_

_Who else was there?  
Saying what?_

_Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly _

_When I am sad and feel you are far away?_

_The book fell that always closed at twilight_

_And my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet._

_Always, always you recede through the evenings_

_Toward the twilight erasing statues._

"Clenched Soul" by Pablo Neruda

_**25 November, 2010 (8:01pm)**_

_**Somewhere He Is Safe**_

He is safe here – and somewhere over that hill he knows that she is waiting for him.

He is not sure exactly where he is, but he recognises the place from that time when voices drifted above him and he was neither body nor mind, but pure spirit wandering freely.

He cannot remember precisely what brought him here, but he moves through the landscape without worrying. He is looking for her, but she is always out of reach. She would be close enough to touch – all brown curls and slim hips – but his hand, when it reached out, grasped at air. She doesn't show her face, but he would know her anywhere.

It is nice to be back here. That other place is too crowded and confusing. If only it could be just the two of them, always. The only change he would make to the landscape he finds himself in would be to have her turn to face him – to maybe take her face in his hands and press his forehead to hers.

This is the place where her laughter turns into light and he can trace her figure in the sky, but he can never lay a hand on her.

Even with her always walking slightly ahead, he is happy in the light breeze, with the broad horizon of darkness between him and those painful thoughts that at this moment are only a suggestion from a distance.

It is quiet, except for a laugh like wind chimes. Her laugh. It is as if she plays the sound on the strings of his heart; he feels it in his core and misses it sorely when it disappears.

He finds himself frowning; other voices are jostling for attention. Their sound rumbles over the grassy plain and makes him feel as if he were shoved suddenly sideways. Shaking his head, he casts about himself for his touchstone – the woman whose name he can't recall, but who knows down to the marrow.

"I still don't understand what happened," a voice thumps him hard on the back.

Why must they always intrude this way?

"We were just talking - "

"Talking about what?"

"You know…this and that."

"Well that was nice and vague."

The voices trip and tumble over each other as he tries to block his ears. Until, a single voice reaches out for him, picking him up and demanding his attention.

"It's time for you to wake up, Chuck."

How could he deny her? That fierce, gentle voice that always brings a tightness in his stomach and a lightness in his chest.

"I don't think that you can just order him to wake up, B."

With sure feet, he hurries towards the waking world, where she beckons him. It doesn't take long; he is moving at the speed of light. And, right on cue, he opens his eyes.

There is darkness in the corners of his vision, but her face is as clear as daylight. She has never looked more terrifyingly beautiful.

He opens his eyes and sees Her, and it is as natural and effortless as a heartbeat. There is no thought, but only a lightness in his chest and a sense of relief.

"Hello, beautiful," he says, lost in the moment before awareness truly sets in.

He sees her shocked face before he completely drifts once more into sleep.

* * *

_**25 November 2010 (7:30pm)**_

_**Asiate, New York **_

Blair smiled across the table at Nicholas Van Den Berg, wondering idly whether her teeth had suddenly grown too large for her mouth.

The whole evening, she'd felt off – stretched too thinly across the ocean, dissolving inch by inch as she struggled with every fibre in her being to have a _nice time. _She'd made a decision, in her entrance hall, to write herself a new story. She had been determined not to end with Chuck Bass.

While that might be true - when theatrics and heartache move aside, it is quite possible to continue living – there was no erasing the mark of Chuck Bass upon her. Even in the early days, when she and Nate had righted their world and he had been the consummate gentlemen, she would find herself sitting opposite him at the table, consciously reminding herself that she was having a _nice time_.

When she and Chuck had gone out to dinner, there was no such thing as nice. She would sit opposite him primly, as his eyes devoured her and tried to guess what colour her underwear was. They would sit next to each other at a play or an opera and he would whisper those filthy, tantalizing things that made her feel like a whore. She would storm off from him, furious at his words, only to feel a thrill when he followed her. There, in the lobbies of the centers of art or literature or business or whatever other human endeavour they were celebrating that night, he would stand before her, refusing to apologise, smiling like a rogue.

He would stand before her, his smile saying that he wasn't sorry, but his eyes begging her not to leave him. Then, with the lightest of touches, he would lift her hand to his mouth and kiss her palm, before putting it against his chest, where his heart was hammering.

"It belongs to you."

And those words would make her feel like a Queen.

Then, it would be her who lost all restraint, and he who looked around the room shyly; underneath it all, he knew that when her passion faded she would be mortified by her display.

Now, though, on the other side of this Great Love, she felt brittle and bruised. She longed for the safety of _nice._ She longed to love the man sitting opposite her, whose hair and eyes evoked the memory of the dewy innocence of her feelings for Nate.

Now, Nicholas was smiling indulgently at her, captivated by her, without knowing the first thing about her.

"I haven't been able to stop thinking about you," Nicholas said with a smile. "There's something so elusive about you, Blair Waldorf. What do you do with your days?"

_I stand beside my lover's bed._

She smiled – elusively, just to please him. One thing her mother had taught her: most men love to be presented with an outline that they can colour in themselves.

One thing she had learned herself: some men see you so clearly that it burns.

"See?" he grinned, one dimple forming on his face. "Elusive."

"I'm not so elusive," she lied.

"You know you are." He took a sip of wine, thoughtful and contemplative, considering her closely. "So what is it?"

Her mind had drifted, so her puzzlement when she looked at him was not an act. "What do you mean?"

"I'm just trying to figure out what made you this way. I'd say a bad break-up, but that seems like too easy an answer for someone like you. So I admit, I'm curious."

Her heart contracted slightly in panic – the way it did when she was put on the spot without a plan in place for dealing with any given situation.

"I don't much like talking about the past," she said flatly, softening the blow with a smile and coy sip of wine.

Nicholas leaned back in his chair, one arm slung over the back. The probing glance he gave her made her shiver; the ghost of Chuck stood over his shoulder and regarded her. She couldn't help but look between them.

"Because it was painful or because it was wonderful?"

"Both," she said, without thinking. She froze slightly at the thrill of exposure, but finding no judgement in his eyes, she felt a daring compulsion to continue speaking. "Because I want to forget that it even happened. I want that privilege."

"But the past is precious," he said, still staring at her so that she felt oddly exposed. "It's the only thing that's certain."

She had underestimated him, she realized. For a moment, she felt a swell of surrealism as she wondered briefly whether he existed at all – or whether she had constructed him in order to hear things that she had blocked out of her mind. But, the smell of the restaurant, the feeling of the chair underneath her, and the smell of his aftershave were all too real. He was here – really it was only she who was drifting in and out.

"Exactly," she said softly, lost in thought. "What hope does the present have, stacked against the past?"

She noticed with the distance of a scientist that she had wounded him. The curve of his cheeks seemed suddenly harsher. His posture seemed to stiffen so that he sat straight in his chair. The rebuke in her statement made his eyes darken.

Her cruelty had brought out the Chuck in him. And at the sight, she couldn't resist going on.

"My past was filled with giants. I walked around convinced that I could hold the world in my hand. And now that I'm older, I see how small I am. The dreams get smaller. Everything contracts. I feel small." She glanced around the restaurant, noting the humdrum sameness of the patrons, even those who wore the latest fashions. There had been a time when she had felt thrillingly different from other people. "Worse – I feel _normal._"

He might have said something at that, but the waiter chose that instant to deliver her lobster and his Wagyu beef. He ordered more drinks (clearly, he'd need it to deal with her mood). She noticed idly that he was wearing exquisite cufflinks. The thought that he had spruced himself up for their date evoked only mild sympathy.

She had done the same, sitting in front of her mirror for the full hour she had come to expect of herself. But, even as she and Dorota adjusted her curls until they were perfectly placed, she had felt disconnected from the image in front of her. She felt as if she were putting make up on a doll.

Presently, Nicholas was staring glumly at his beef. For her part, she looked at her meal as if it were an alien creature: she didn't have the slightest appetite.

"What's wrong with normal?" Nicholas said finally, his shoulders now hunched and his elbows on the table. She was almost amused that he felt like normality was an insult crafted specifically against him.

What was wrong with it? What was wrong with wanting what other people had? Sometimes she would see a couple – so painfully normal that it was almost distasteful – and she would find herself aching to be like them. To slip off the Blair Waldorf costume and step into their lives. But, she knew herself well enough to understand that she would never be normal, could never stomach a normal life.

"You're a reader," she said with shrug, recalling their first meeting over those musty books. "They don't write great tales about normality."

"Arthur Miller might disagree."

"But that's tragedy. I see the tragedy in a normal life. But, I've never seen anything exultant in it."

He was obviously tiring of her melancholy. He picked up his knife and fork, striving for something to do. As he cut his meat, he looked at her – trying to formulate his words.

"So what's stopping you? What's stopping you from being that person again?"

She looked up from the serviette she had been wringing in her lap. "What do you mean?"

"If you think the rest of us are so humdrum," he said, with only a hint of bitterness, "then what's stopping you from going back to the time when your life looked the way it was supposed to?"

She hated herself for it, but her mind immediately turned to Chuck Bass. Was it really that simple? Had all of her youthful bravado, her conviction that she would one day conquer the world been derived from the feelings that Chuck Bass had for her? Surely that wasn't true. She might have been able to blame him for the way she felt now – the betrayal that cut her to the core, the actions he had taken to make her feel less than she was.

When she was honest with herself, the last time she had felt truly free, the last time she had felt as if she could conquer anything had been when she saw herself reflected in his eyes when he was a teenager. Their relationship in adulthood was complicated, messy. So much of her time had been spent trying to unravel his inner darkness. It had been about him, in many ways. After losing her father, losing Yale, losing the dream she had crafted for herself so carefully, all that had been left was the love she had for Chuck Bass. With all of that gone, what was left?

It had been so much easier when she had been at Constance and she and Chuck had been sneaking around; it had been all about her. She had known – beyond a shadow of a doubt – that he was smitten with her. In that time when her sexuality was only just opening up before her, she had seen her power over him and she had realized that without trying, she had utterly changed his life. She had been so certain of her place in the world, so cocky in her ability to mould the world to her will. She had held it in her hand.

She had no idea how to recapture that feeling. She had been so convinced that it was gone forever. Quite apart from the pain of realizing that Chuck had erased them from his memory, was the pain that came with realizing that the person he saw when he looked at her – respect in his eyes - was someone who hadn't existed for a while now. She felt all too aware that she didn't measure up to herself. It was a double blow.

"It's not as easy as it sounds," she said glumly.

"Probably not," he shrugged. It seemed to be a habit of his. "But I'm the sort of person that believes that if you want something enough, it'll come to you."

"That's a pedestrian life philosophy," she said with a wrinkled nose.

To her surprise, he let out a loud bark of laughter. "I suppose it is. But you have it easier; you've felt the way you want to feel before. Now it's just about trying to get that back."

For a moment, they held each other's eyes. His mood seemed to have lifted; he was smiling at her slyly, his tongue running over a few of his teeth. For the first time since he picked her up at her house, she felt herself relaxing.

Blair had opened her mouth to speak, when her suddenly her phone beeped and the mood shattered.

_B. Sorry to interrupt date. Come to Lennox Hill ASAP – it's Chuck. Sx_

* * *

_**28 March, 2007 (9.00pm)**_

_**Suite 1812, New York**_

He sits still, watching her as she wanders around his suite, a martini glass in hand, running her fingers over the objects that line his shelves.

He sits still, because he fears that movement will destroy the moment.

She arrived fifteen minutes ago. She appeared at the doorway in stockings that teased him and with the fire-engine red lipstick that he sometimes asked the women who came back to his suite to wear. The sight of it on his shirt collar – or on his skin – was enough to make him aroused.

But, he tried not to notice the shuddering breaths he'd take when lips the colour of hers would travel down his chest – the places his mind would travel to when he imagined those lips closing around his –

He tries to clear his head, reminding himself that she came to his suite to find Nate. She'd stood on the other side of the threshold, her eyes remote and condescending. But something was off – he could tell it immediately. The white knuckles that closed on her Oroton bag were a give away. There was something desperate about the way she stalked passed him, waiting expectantly for a drink.

He can scarcely recall whether she had spoken at all since entering. He had merely passed her the martini and settled on the couch as she moved through his space. He sits and watched her as her judgemental eyes dissected his silver lighter, his candlesticks, the few books he kept on the shelf – _The Art of War_, _The Great Gatsby, Coffee and Cigarettes –_ a life philosophy in book form_._

He doesn't move and she doesn't speak.

He doesn't move and she doesn't say what's wrong.

She picks apart each of the elements of his room as he picks apart the elements of her body. She struggles to keep her hands busy; they are hyperactive and unpredictable. It is unlike her to fiddle with things, to move without intention. Her eyes when they look around the room are flat. She is in the room, but she is far from here.

Finally, she turns to look at him, sitting so uncharacteristically still and straight. One of her arms is folded over her stomach and the other elbow rests upon it. She holds the martini near her face. She hasn't had a sip.

"Do you get lonely here, Bass?"

He looks around the room, seeing it through foreign eyes. The light shifts before his eyes, and he sees what she sees: the hint of desolation behind the sparse decorations. The few exquisite pieces of furniture and decoration could have been picked for anyone willing to expend the money for the best. There is not a touch of personality in the aspect of the place he eats, sleeps and fucks.

He has never seen the need to put forward those intimate parts of himself. He knows that Blair's own bedroom is crammed full of memories – positioned perfectly to torment her when the present failed to live up to a bygone era. It must kill her to see those photographs of Serena she so painstakingly pasted into the scrapbooks she kept under her bed. He doesn't know how she can sleep on such a bitter reminder of the friend who fled. The friend who fled with her boyfriend's heart.

For his part, he has always believed that his lack of personal affects was a product of his inherent secretiveness. He likes the thought of someone entering his room and looking around would not have the faintest idea of who he is. He likes the idea of being a wraith – being someone passing through.

"No," he says simply.

She nods as if this were a sufficient answer. For a moment, she seems to consider sitting on the couch opposite him, but for some reason she moves towards him and sits next to him: staring at a single point on the opposite wall.

"You like being alone?" she says contemplatively, playing with her necklace.

"I enjoy my own company," he shrugs, mentally adding – _but not as much as I enjoy yours_.

She is sitting close by him, so that his arm can feel the warmth of hers. He is not entirely comfortable with this close proximity. It is jarring to feel the warmth of another person without the associated fumbling for buttons and ragged breathing.

"I envy you," she says, still looking straight ahead.

"I don't blame you," he says lazily, shifting slightly until their arms are brushing. To his surprise, she doesn't move an inch. Instead, she focuses intently on their arms – hers so white that it makes his looked tanned.

"It must be nice," she says quietly, looking at him through her eyelashes. "Not caring about leaving people behind."

It is exactly the impression he strives to create in the minds of those around him, but at the sound of her saying it, he feels unreasonably hard-done-by. He feels an urge to say something cruel, to lash out at the girl whose eyes stare at him so intently. But, as she looks down once more, he notices that the tremor in her hand has lodged itself in her throat.

The impression is jarring; he is struck suddenly by the fear that she is coming apart before him. But, a moment later she seems to pull herself back together.

"Or maybe," she says darkly, still focusing at a point across the room, "some people are easier to walk away from than others."

He is about to answer, when he feels the most alien, thrilling sensation that he has ever experienced. The darkened room around him holds its breath, and both Blair and he focus on a single point at the centre of the universe.

Her hand is on his leg.

He realizes, for the first time, that she came here without expecting to find Nate. He remembers, for the first time, that Nate is away sailing. He realizes, not for the first time, that she knows. She _knows_ the effect she has on him. She _knows_.

And now her finger is tracing a circle on his thigh and he is struggling to make sense of what is happening.

Worse than that: he realizes that she is about five seconds from a suicide mission. It is a strange prescience that overtakes him. He has always understood her better than most. Something is off. Something has thrown her so significantly that she has come to him to – what? Crash calamity into her life? To remind herself that no matter what happens, she has a strange hold on Chuck Bass?

Or is it possible that she just needs someone to be there, and by some strange twist of fate, the only person who is there is the one person who has never allowed himself to rely on anyone?

"Blair - " his voice is little more than a rasp as her fingers make their miniscule progress on his leg. For a moment, he allows himself to wonder what would happen if her hand continued its journey upwards – hypnotised by the sight of her perfect red nails and the sensations that are coursing through his body from the feather-light touches of her hand. Before he can get carried away with the thought, her voice invades the silence once more.

When he looks up, he sees that her eyes are glistening. "What does it take to make people stay?"

There is a strange hollowness in his chest as his eyes meet hers. The vulnerability of her stare is too much for him. There is nothing he hates more than weakness. But, the thought of Blair Waldorf allowing herself to show him this side of her is strangely terrifying. He does not pity her; he is scared for her. He fears for her like she is a small and delicate creature without a shred of protection as the predators approach.

"Tell me what I have to do to make people stay," she says, her voice wavering.

But between her lines, he reads one thing that makes it hard to swallow. She wants him to stay. She doesn't want him to walk away from her – the way Serena had, the way Nate seems to be.

With more self-control than he ever thought was possible, he wraps one of his hands (oddly large compared to hers) around the hand that makes illicit suggestions about the lengths she would go to hold onto him. Stilling its progress, he places her hand gently back into her own lap.

She can scarcely look at him, but he finds himself oddly captivated by her.

"I could never walk away from you, Waldorf," he says, his voice strange to his own ears. Her gaze meets his again and for once all those strange moments between the two of them bubble to the surface – those moments that they both tried to ignore, those moments that made them take miniscule steps closer towards each other. But, the thought of Nate and strange fragility of her mood makes him gruff. "I'd have to run to be free of you."

For a moment, she sits still, her hands now demurely crossed in her lap. Then, she lifts her chin and stands up in a single fluid movement. Without speaking, she picks up her handbag and walks to the door of his suite, as he sits in the same position on the couch.

Her armour is back in place. Whatever this strange visit was, it is not going to happen again.

"Let's forget all about this,"[1] she says haughtily.

Without waiting for his response, she slips out his suite.

The next day, the news of her father's flight from New York breaks on Gossip Girl. The pictures of Roman and Harold locked in a passionate embrace are emailed and re-emailed from different Upper East Side addresses.

He doesn't call and he doesn't text. He doesn't even email. But, the night he finds out, he comes to her house. He knocks on her bedroom door and she opens it without needing to ask who is there. He sits on the chair in front of her mirror.

He says nothing.

But, every few minutes, she'd steal a glance in his direction.

His body says what he can't: _I'm still here._

And she responds: _ok._

* * *

_**25 November, 2010 (8:21pm)**_

_**Lennox Hill, New York**_

The room had been uncomfortably silent since Chuck's words: "_Hello_, _beautiful_."

It wasn't the words themselves that were so shocking; they'd all heard him say exactly that phrase to her over the phone, in person, with hands moving over her, flirting with the boundary of polite public behaviour. What was startling was the fleeting glimpse of the Old Chuck. All of them were thrown by it. None of them quite knew what to say.

But all of them were looking at Blair. Even as the nurses came to check on him, the room was tense with anticipation, awaiting some reaction from Blair. For her part, Blair sat on a chair, staring at Chuck with a look of intensity that seemed impossible to maintain.

For her part, Blair couldn't deny that the thought of Chuck needing help made her heart contract painfully. Nonetheless, she had almost rolled her eyes at Serena's message; the '_it's Chuck_' almost made her laugh. As if Serena needed to clarify that it would be Chuck.

Truth be told, she almost resented people calling _this_ Chuck by the moniker Chuck Bass. With all memory of their year together gone, Blair felt indignant that people could still call him that.

For all intents and purposes, the boy lying in the body of the man she knew so intimately was the Chuck she had known in high school. The Chuck who had schemed with her, the Chuck who had admired her from afar and who had absolutely agreed with her assessment of her place in the world.

Now, she was considering him closely, considering the strange fracture of his current condition: the line that could be drawn between that which his mind remembered and the memories that had burrowed their way into his body. It was the only way she could conceptualize of it; she could tell that in spite of what he remembered consciously, there was an undeniable memory inscribed on his skin – as undeniable as the scar she had touched.

The nurses told them that he would awaken soon enough; all they could do was wait. As they left, the room settled once more into silent anticipation. Serena and Blair sat there in their evening's finery, while Dan and Nate wore the casual clothes that had become a strange sort of uniform for them. They noticed nothing about each other, each focused on the warm cheeks of the sleeping friend-brother-lover-enemy that had brought each of them to this place where young people had no reason to be.

All they could do was wait.

"I think it's a defence mechanism," Nate announced suddenly, from the corner of the room where he stood with his arms crossed over his chest.

Serena, Dan and Blair all looked up at him, surprised by the interruption. For a moment, they were all stunned by the beauty of his form, displayed so vividly against the white wall. While the rest of them were washed out by the lighting, the sterile surroundings served only to accentuate Nate's beauty. It gave his words a strange gravity. It made them listen to him.

"Whenever he hears something that is too much for him, his body shuts down to prevent his mind from hearing it. You know?"

"Sort of shutting down for protection?" Serena asked, twirling her hair around one of her fingers distractedly.

"Not to get too scientific about all of it," Dan commented dryly.

Serena narrowed her eyes at him, not used to being so easily mocked by him. "Then I guess we should be asking Dan what they were talking about."

Right on cue, Dan's eyes shifted left to right as he looked for an exit. "Oh, you know. This and that."

"Dude I don't even know what that means," Nate said.

"Yes, tell us, Humphrey," Blair said suddenly, making all of them jump. "What exactly did you tell him?"

Dan was spared from answering though, because at that moment the door opened and Eric Van Der Woodsen entered the room.

"What's going on?" Eric asked, sensing the palpable tension in the room.

"Nothing," Serena smiled indulgently at him, standing up to draw him into a loose hug. "Chuck's asleep again, so we're waiting for him to wake up. But nothing's going on."

Eric shrugged her off, looking around at each of their faces: Nate's cocked head, staring at the guilty expression on Dan's face, and Serena's worry underneath her warm reassurances. It was not until his eyes fell on Blair that he stopped short; she was giving him a positively icy glare, her hands resting on the arms of her chair as if she were a queen looking at a traitorous subject.

Perhaps it was because of her regal air, or perhaps it was because he had so recently been thinking about that time when she, Chuck and he had been inseparably close. Whatever the reason, when he spoke next, he addressed himself only to her. "What's going on?"

She held his eye. "What do you care?"

"Blair - " Serena started, warningly.

"No," Eric held up his hand, surprisingly forceful. "If you've got something to say to me Blair, you should come out and say it."

"Fine," she said with a bitchy smile. "I just find it interesting that suddenly you're such an attentive friend to Chuck, when all the time after the accident, you couldn't be bothered to take a day off from your hectic schedule of fantasizing about Jake Gyllenhaal to actually come and see him."

The uncomfortable silence deepened, as Eric was visibly shaken by the vitriol in Blair's voice.

"I was mad," he said carefully.

"_I _was mad," she said sharply. "But that didn't really seem to matter in the grand scheme of things."

He ducked his head, unable to refute her words. "I'm here now."

"Generous," she drawled.

Eric shook his head. "You sound like Chuck."

"That," said a new voice. "Is the nicest thing you could have said to her…"

As one, they all turned to see Chuck – his eyes open and a small smirk on his lips. There was no hint of the Old Chuck, and Blair felt a swell of relief and disappointment at the sight.

"Chuck," Serena said nervously. "How are you feeling?"

"Oh dandy," he said sarcastically.

"What happened?" Eric asked.

Chuck looked him up and down. "And you are?"

"My brother, Eric," Serena said sharply, noting the crestfallen expression on Eric's face. "You've met him about a hundred times."

"Right," Chuck said, examining his nails with exquisite disinterest. "Nice to see you again, Younger Van Der Woodsen."

Eric swallowed, striving to mask the surprising feeling of loss he felt at the realization that for all his hatred of Chuck, all the resentment he still carried with him, to Chuck, Eric was no one at all important.

"Nice to see you again, too."

Chuck had already tired of the conversation, examining the expressions on their faces and wondering at the alien landscape of the dynamic between them. Then, his eyes caught sight of Blair.

They all saw it: the thrill of electricity that came about when their eyes met. The conflicting emotions on Chuck's face at the sight of her. He wasn't as good as masking his emotions as he had been before the accident. Even Dan felt a wave of sympathy as he made out the shock, the longing, the desolation on Chuck's face as he struggled to make sense of the emotions that the mere sight of her evoked in him. Even after Dan had so clumsily informed him of their past – if only giving the basic overview – he could tell that Chuck could scarcely make sense of it.

"You came back," he whispered.

It was such a positively un-Chuck thing to say – to allow himself to be happy that someone had come to see him, to allow himself to be seen to be sentimental by a room full of people. It had been impossible to see when they were all the same age, but looking back at Chuck as he had been in high school, they were all struck by how innocent he seemed. Without the torment of his father's death, losing the company to Jack and the million betrayals that changed him forever, there was a strange sweetness in him that only perhaps Blair had seen.

Her face gave nothing away. "What happened, Chuck?"

He swallowed a couple of times, glancing at Dan. "Nothing. I mean, Humphrey was droning on about something dull. I probably had to pass out just to avoid killing myself." Finally, he seemed to master his expression. "Nothing happened, really. Right Humphrey."

Dan glanced at Blair. "Right. Nothing."

For a moment, she examined Chuck's face. Then, she shook her head as if to clear it. "Well then," she said stiffly. "I suppose there's nothing left to do here. If you'll all excuse me, I have a date to finish."

With that, she stood up and hurried towards the door, the sound of her shoes clicking against the linoleum.

She never looked back. But, if she had, she would have seen what the rest of them saw; at the mere mention of her date, his eyes had clouded and a strange ripple had passed over his face. It seemed that at least part of his darkness had travelled with him into this new life of his. It wasn't his fault, really, that the only thing he could really feel strongly about was Blair Waldorf.

But, within a few seconds, he had pressed whatever feeling he had experienced at the pronouncement deep down inside of him. For a wavering moment, each of them wondered whether he would be able to articulate those feelings that moved inside of him. He opened his mouth as if to name them, but then he closed it tight and shook his head as if to clear it.

For a moment they sat silently. The air was full of thoughts and things to say. But at times like these, only the small things are ever said, as the big things lurk unsaid inside.[2]

Staring at his hands, Chuck finally pulled himself up and looked straight to Serena.

"It's not serious," Serena found herself saying – not able to feel traitorous in the face of his inarticulate pain - in answer to his unspoken question. "She just needs the distraction."

His bravado was back in place. "What do I care?" With lion-like grace, he stretched his arms over his head and smirked lazily at them. "So. Eric. You're a Jake Gyllenhaal man?"

* * *

_**28 November, 2010 (9.30am)**_

_**Waldorf Penthouse, New York**_

The flurry of activity in the penthouse was a welcome distraction. Surely, surrounded by all the glamorous clothes that Eleanor had brought along with her for her meeting with Bergdorfs would be enough to distract Blair from the grainy monotony that had overtaken her.

She had lied that night, when she left Chuck. She hadn't gone back to Nicholas and picked up where their odd date had left. She had walked for a long time, hoping to lose herself, but that _hello, beautiful_ of his followed her wherever she went. It had left her in two minds about herself – about them. Was the _real_ Chuck just under the surface, vying against the blank memories to reach the surface? Or was it possible that underneath everything, with all the memories stripped away, there was still some germ of the love they had felt for each other?

There had always been something. Even during high school, there had been something between them that they could scarcely articulate. It had been Chuck, and no one else who had colluded in the conspiracy of her fictions, who had agreed whole-heartedly that the way things should be accorded perfectly with the way she saw things. It was only now, these years later, that Blair with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of his gestures. It would have been so easy to shatter her story, to break that chain of thought that had led her to thinking of herself as a Queen. He could have so easily ruined that fragment of a dream that she carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.

To let it be, to travel with it, and even to transfer it into reality, as Chuck had, was a much harder thing to do. Especially for a boy who hadn't quite known how to do hard and sweet things.[2]

She had found herself, without quite expecting it, arriving outside the Empire.

God she despised this place. It's majesty, its permanence was a constant insult to her. It would go nowhere. In one hundred years, when she had slipped into the earth forever, it would stand here – irrepressible, the winner.

She had stood before the hotel that Chuck had traded her for and felt suddenly like weeping. In a few days, Chuck would return to the place he had loved more than her – and he wouldn't even remember it.

For the first time in years, she remembered her aching desire for the certainty of fairytales, where nothing can go wrong. Where the certainty and familiarity of the words were magical. There were no secrets in fairytales, there were no lies or sudden unforeseen darkness. Fairytales didn't shock you with the unexpected.

They were the opposite of Chuck Bass.

She didn't notice she was laughing until people in the street started staring at her and keeping a wide berth as they passed. She wondered idly whether she might be losing her mind.

Her feet took her home eventually. And for days she had been quiet and withdrawn – the world had lost what little splendor it had had. The memory of what she had once been and where she was now was a sharp jab against raw flesh.

Even now, as Eleanor scurried around the room, sent Cyrus to get coffee, she felt oddly distant from everyone. It was as if her subconscious was locked in a serious debate with itself, but she couldn't know what the outcome was until everything was settled. She ignored calls – from Nicholas, from Serena, and even one from Dan Humphrey that only lasted a few rings.

Finally, it seemed that everything in the penthouse was in order – and Eleanor could finally turn her mind to Mother-Daughter Time. They were bad at this; they had never really known how to approach each other. Often it was Cyrus who acted as the conduit to deep and meaningful conversation. Left to their own devices, they would keep things light. But, now that Eleanor lived overseas, they couldn't rely on proximity to keep them close.

So, with a slight grimace from both sides, Eleanor sat down on the couch next to her and poured them cups of tea.

"You look thin," she said simply.

Blair smiled slightly. "I've lost weight."

"You look too thin," Eleanor amended, her hands steady as she held the tea in her hand.

"I've had a lot on my mind."

_I've lost my mind._

Eleanor sighed. "So there's been no change with Charles?"

"No."

"Well that's awfully convenient for him, isn't it?" she said with surprising bitterness.

"He's not faking it, mother," Blair said, barely concealing an eye roll.

"No?" she asked with an eyebrow raised.

"Even Chuck Bass isn't capable of that level of deception."

She wasn't entirely certain of that, even as she said it.

Eleanor placed the cup and saucer once more on the table. Leaning back on the sofa, she looked into the distance and shook her head, pressing one perfectly manicured finger to her temple.

"Sometimes I wish you and Nate had never broken up."

Blair laughed bitterly. "Sometimes I wish that as well."

"You know it terrified me," Eleanor said confidentially, still not meeting her eyes. "I caught wind of it when you were in high school. You really weren't as good at sneaking around as you thought." She smiled ruefully. "But, I could understand what that was – a rebellion in an otherwise unblemished youth. And the way he looked at you – the way he followed you around. He was smitten."

"So what terrified you?" Blair asked, her nose crinkled.

"When you fell in love with him. It was so intense. It was too adult. It wasn't…healthy. I was worried you'd lose yourself in him. In that darkness of his."

Blair said nothing, not trusting herself to speak in the face of her mother's perceptiveness.

"But I didn't have the heart to say it. For a while, I'd never seen you happier. I started to trust him with you." Finally, Eleanor turned to look at her. "I knew you felt lost. With all those…_disappointments_ at the end of Constance…I wanted you to be happy."

Blair pulled away at the reminder of those 'disappointments' that still made her stomach squirm. "I was happy. And then I wasn't."

"I don't know why it ended between you," Eleanor said stiffly. "But I know it wasn't because you stopped loving him. I know it was his fault. And I know that all of it has thrown you. You're different now."

"It doesn't matter anyway," she said softly, tears starting to fill her eyes, which she wiped away angrily. "He doesn't remember any of it."

In a fairly unexpected demonstration of affection, Eleanor reached out across the gap between them and squeezed her knee. "You know what I've always admired about you?"

"What?"

Eleanor regarded her fondly. "Your father probably wouldn't approve of me saying it, but in all honesty, it is the way you use people."

Blair snorted. "Thanks a lot."

"It's a compliment," Eleanor said frankly. "Everyone you meet, you think about what they can do for you. That was what shifted with you and Charles. You stopped thinking about your own needs. It was all about him." She gave Blair's knee one more squeeze before pulling back. "And you, my dear, do not come second."

"I don't feel like that person anymore," Blair said, hating the slight waver in her voice and noticing how instinctively Eleanor recoiled form her emotion.

"Well you are that person," she said, with more confidence than Blair felt. Then, suddenly, she chuckled. "It reminds me of the movie I watched on the plane. _Peter Pan._"

"I hate that movie."

"So do I," Eleanor said, smiling at her fondly, as her eyes started trailing back to her clothes and her mind turning once more to work. "Every time that little blonde girl reaches for her sewing kit, all I can think is 'sew your own damn shadow, Peter.'"

With that, Eleanor disappeared once more into the world of work, leaving Blair feeling oddly resolved.

_Sew your own damn shadow, Peter._

* * *

**A/N: I was going to continue from here – but, I felt that the chapter was getting too long. Next Chapter will feature Chuck's release and Blair's change of attitude. Not much progress this chapter, I know, but the action will pick up soon. Just thought you guys deserved an update!**

[1] _Love in the Time of Cholera_, Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

[2] _The God of Small Things, _Arundhati Roy.


	7. Chapter 7: If I could tell you

A/N: So, I know it's been a ridiculously long time, but I was suddenly struck with some inspiration for this story. I apologise to all those readers who've sent me messages asking for an update – I was suffering from a lot of writer's block and found that life kept getting in the way. I hope you enjoy this chapter.

_Between the Shadow and the Soul_

A Chuck and Blair Story

**Chapter Seven:** If I Could Tell You

_Time will say nothing but I told you so,_

_Time only knows the price we have to pay;_

_If I could tell you I would let you know._

_If we should weep when clowns put on their show,_

_If we should stumble when musicians play,_

_Time will say nothing but I told you so._

_There are no fortunes to be told, although,_

_Because I love you more than I can say,_

_If I could tell you I would let you know._

_The winds must come from somewhere when they blow,_

_There must be reasons why the leaves decay;_

_Time will say nothing but I told you so._

_Perhaps the roses really want to grow,_

_The vision seriously intends to stay;_

_If I could tell you I would let you know._

_Suppose the lions all get up and go,_

_And all the brooks and soldiers run away;_

_Will Time say nothing but I told you so?_

_If I could tell you I would let you know._

WH Auden

* * *

_**30 November, 2010 (10.00am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City**_

Patient's Name: Chuck Bass

Notes: Patient to be released into the care of Nathaniel Archibald. Orthopedic boot to be worn for six weeks and then to be returned to this hospital. Neurological damage restricted primarily to memory retention. On-going psychological treatment recommended. Referral attached.

* * *

_**30 November, 2010 (9.45am)**_

_**Waldorf Penthouse, New York City**_

Nate entered the penthouse through a cloud of Eleanor's perfume ("Nate, darling, I'm sorry I can't talk – send my regards to your mother. _Look_ at those cheekbones of yours. Call me – we should talk about getting you to do some modeling for the new line.").

He had merely mumbled something inaudible and hurried to the heart of the household, where Blair was standing with a clipboard in hand, barking orders at Eleanor's assistants who scurried like ants around the room that was bursting with colour and clothing.

Nate felt like an intruder in the world of women as he tried not to trip over the shoes and scarves that formed an obstacle course to Blair. When he finally entered the circle she had cleared for herself, she didn't seem to notice his standing there. Her malicious eyes were focused on a wilting intern standing before her, all but shaking with a silky garment in her hand.

"…So now _I'm_ confused," Blair said disdainfully. "Because I was almost certain that I had asked you to press the dresses and hang them on the racks. But, I must have asked you to scrunch up my mother's dress into a ball and play a game of soccer with it before throwing it into the corner. I must have said that, because you don't appear to have any obvious brain injuries preventing you from following simple instructions."

"I'm sorry," the girl rasped, paling underneath her fringe.

"So am I. Obviously you weren't ready for lofty heights of responsibility you've ascended to. So, maybe you should go sort some buttons."

"O-okay."

The girl scurried off, the first tears forming in her eyes as she brushed passed Nate, and Blair smiled blandly after her.

"Try not to swallow any," she called sweetly. Her eyes, when they focused on him, were sparkling with malevolence. "Nate. What a surprise."

Nate's hands were buried deep in his pockets. "Did you have to be that mean to her?"

Her face was the very picture of innocence. "Who?"

"That girl – the one whose self-esteem you just drop kicked?"

Blair waved dismissively. "Please, she's got interning for Eleanor Waldorf on her resume. She's going to RISD. She'll be fine." She turned on her heels and glanced over her shoulder. "Now is this a social visit or was there something you needed?"

Nate was suddenly very aware that the look of exasperation and fondness must have been written on his face because her eyes softened slightly and she gestured to the kitchen. "Let's talk in the kitchen. You can indiscriminately eat whatever is in the fridge."

Nate sighed, but dutifully scurried after her.

The kitchen was immaculate as always. Blair opened the fridge with a look of utter disinterest on her face – adopting the same oddly distant look she got around food. Nate was suddenly reminded of the lengths that Chuck used to go to convince her to eat. It had always shocked Nate - how someone so profoundly selfish would think to call ahead and have her favourite meal waiting for her when they got home. He would make it a ritual; distracting her from how much she was eating by wrapping his arms around her and feeding her himself. One for you, one for me. Perfectly balanced – as it always was when Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck were involved.

Once, in the heat of an argument that Nate had been mortified to overhear, she had thrown this sweet gesture at Chuck's feet. "You're always feeding me – what _is_ it Chuck? Some sick attempt at making me fat so no one else will look at me? So that everyone will stay away from me and I'll always have to do what you say?"

There was a long silence, so long and deep that Nate wondered whether they were even in the next room anymore. And then Chuck's voice had come, smooth and quiet and almost vulnerable in a way that Chuck would only allow himself to be around her.

"People will always look at you. It would be impossible not to."

"I'm serious, Chuck," she said, her voice losing its harsh edge. Nate wondered, concealed as he was behind the wall of the hallway that divided his bedroom from the living room, whether she hadn't started this fight because the fine fissures of vulnerability that covered her personality like a fine lace were starting to show. "Why do you force me to eat?"

Nate could hear Chuck swallow. He knew their dance by heart. He knew that Blair would have taken two steps closer to him. Two steps and no more to show Chuck that she wanted to make similar strides into his impenetrable mind.

He even stole a glance, then, under the pretence of checking whether the way was clear to the front door. He saw Chuck reach out and press a hand to her cheek. "I've only seen it in films and on television," he said sadly, with a look of heartbreaking tenderness on his face. "But, I thought that's what people did to look after each other. And I want to look after you. Properly. The way neither of us have ever been looked after."

For a long moment, Blair and Chuck stared into each other's eyes, as if coming to some kind of accord. Then, with a soft smile, Blair nodded.

"Okay."

"Okay," Chuck responded.

She had never complained about his feeding her after that. Nate wondered idly who made sure that Blair ate properly these days. Her movements were entirely mechanical as she put together a selection of tarts for him. He didn't have the heart to ask her to stop, until he realized that she had ceased paying attention – that she was piling more and more delicate fruit salad tarts onto the plate.

Eventually, he reached out one of his large, tanned hands and placed it lightly over hers – to stop it moving. For a moment, he admired the way their skin looked. How easy it would have been to continue pretending with her. Years could have passed. Perhaps they would have been together forever.

Or perhaps they would have walked further down the path that had laid down for them before her eyes caught sight of the dark, wounded creature that bade her follow him. Maybe he could have reached for her hand as she stood on the edge, considering whether or not the sight of the wide open sky was worth this sort of risk.

He let go of her hand. It was easier to let her go then to see her struggle. And he had seen that again and again. The way that she would talk to him, while longing to run to Chuck's side. Going through the motions.

But, at least today she seemed to be focused on one of her favourite tasks: humiliating the young women who would have killed to step into her life for even one day.

"What can I do for you, Nate?" she asked, her voice false and bright and surrounded by humming and buzzing appliances.

"I need a favour," he said. "This dude at Columbia informs me that if I miss another tutorial I am going to get an absent fail for the class."

"God, Nate," Blair rolled her eyes. "How difficult is it to merely _attend _class?"

"Well gee, Blair, but I've had a couple of things on my plate," Nate snapped, before sighing heavily. "Sorry. I'm just – it's been kind of intense…this whole Chuck thing. I mean, I know it's intense for everyone, especially you, but it's like one minute Chuck barely has time for me, and now I'm like his number one bud. And I feel bad always having class and lacrosse…I dunno. It's a lot.

It was possibly the most he'd said in weeks, and yet when he looked up he found Blair apparently unmoved, her hands flat on the bench between them, playing idly with the side of his plate. It was difficult, really, to identify what was wrong with her bearing. Outwardly, she was the same old Blair. But, there was something distant and unreachable in her.

In fact, she reminded him of how she had been at Constance. Always focused on herself, affecting the picture of empathy while calculating how far she could progress up the ladder of her ambition. He shook the feeling; that wasn't the Blair he knew. Not anymore.

"Anyway, I'm meant to be picking up Chuck and taking him home. But, I have to go to class."

He looked at her expectantly, but she merely offered him a bland smile. "What are you going to do?"

She was not making this easy for him.

"I know it's a lot to ask…but I was hoping you could pick him up. Take him home – to the Empire."

_The Empire._

The words caused a small shudder to pass over Blair's delicate frame – moving her shoulders in their sockets and rattling her central nervous system. But, it was so miniscule that Nate fancied he might have concocted it himself. Certainly, when she had come to the hotel to pick up Bart's will she had been perfectly poised. Nonetheless, the structure of it, its weight and height and the grotesque lights of its name, had become synonymous with Chuck's betrayal. Nate's home had destroyed Blair's relationship.

"Fine," she said with a shrug.

"Are you sure?" Nate asked carefully. "I couldn't get in touch with Serena."

"Why would it bother me?" she asked, her eyes hard on his.

_Because the Empire has fallen._

But, Nate had always been exceptionally good at pretending for her. So he shrugged and grinned and thanked her and took some tarts for the road.

They probably could have pretended forever. If only she'd never stumbled upon something real.

* * *

_**7 October 2005 (3.00am)**_

_**The Bass Cave, New York City**_

A strange sort of silence falls over the room - untidy, with floors covered with food and spilled drinks.

It had been the four of them – "The Dream Team," Nate had crowed – drinking and sharing those flirty little confidences that friends hand over to each other wish such abandon and fondness.

An exercise of trust. Truth or Dare. Her favourite.

But, now, only two of them sit cross-legged in a circle that used to four. Serena is asleep in the bathtub, and no one can quite remember how she got there. Nate is face down on the couch, snoring.

Around the corner, obscured from view by the side of the large, ostentatious bed and the wall that gave the only semblance of privacy in Chuck's suite, only two of the Dream Team are left.

Dark eyes meet dark eyes. Knees nearly touching.

It is fitting that it is only the two of them; no one was ever as willing to go to the edge of the precipice quite like Blair Waldorf. And no one knew how to hurl themselves off the edge quite like Chuck Bass. Especially _this _Chuck Bass - drinking straight from the bottle.

He was reaching that state of drunkenness when anything seems possible. The drinks were making him think thoughts that he didn't usually allow. Perfection – Blair Waldorf's own personal brand of perfection – is what he is after. He wishes to sully it – to prove that human folly is universal.[1]

The game they are playing now might as well be re-named 'Truth.' It is daring to speak secrets.

_How often do you masturbate? _

Her question – not his, and the surprise at hearing her say such a word makes it hard to resist leaving this little circle they've created in the corner of the room and closing himself away in the bathroom.

_Why do you ask? Enjoying the mental image?_

_Why are you avoiding the question?_

_Twice per day. _

A pause.

_Impressed?_

_Disturbed._

Another pause, neither of them have noticed that they are slightly closer than they were before; both are secure in the sound of Nate's snoring. They might as well be alone. But it's safer having people around.

There's one question he longs to ask her, so he asks it with a nonchalant shrug, taking a sip from his glass, as if he couldn't care less.

"Why don't you put out?"

She wrinkles her nose and he fancies she might leave him here, along in his dark room to curl up next to her boyfriend on the couch. She can take this sort of liberty tonight; her mother thinks she is at Serena's house, if she thinks of her at all.

But, that's not how they play. They play for keeps. Winner takes all.

She looks down, her eyelashes casting shadows on her cheeks and making her eyes look impossibly large and dark in the low light.

"I just think there are better moments."

"Spoken like a true virgin."

She rolls her eyes. "I don't expect you to understand, Bass. But there's a moment, before the first kiss. Before things get messy and complicated." Her mouth and eyes move in a perfectly synchronized dance. She is taken away by her own words. She romances herself with the notion of fairytales. "One moment, your lips even touch someone else's, that is absolutely perfect. It's so innocent and full of potential. Until a kiss matches that moment before a kiss, I don't think you should rush into anything."[2]

His drunken synapses are making connections that his sober mind wouldn't dare to. "But isn't that what it's like with Nate?"

"Of course."

It's the first lie she's told in this game. And it pleases him so much that he ignores the way her mouth says one thing as her eyes examine the small patch of ground between them.

* * *

_**30 November, 2010 (10.20am)**_

_**Lennox Hill Hospital, New York City**_

Chuck sat in the armchair of his hospital room, dressed in soft grey slacks and a button down shirt with his immaculate suitcase sitting primly on the ground by his side.

His overcoat was draped over the back of the seat and he was perfectly still, save for the silver pen that he rotated around his fingers. He had run his hands over the engraving so many times that he fancied the numbers may be written on his finger tips.

_11 _and then _17_ and then _07._

The numbers were written on the back of his eyelids. The numbers were in the air between him and Blair Waldorf whenever they spoke.

When they used to speak.

He had been awaiting this day since his eyes had opened on the alien landscape of 2010, with nothing in his pockets but memories that were now three years out of date. His eyes had been fixed upon this day: the day when the maddening institution of the hospital would release its grip on him and allow him to step back into his life.

And now this day was here. The sky was overcast without being thundery and his bag was packed.

"You must be looking forward to getting out of here," the ambulance driver he had bummed a cigarette from yesterday had commented.

Chuck had smirked at him, leaning on the wall of the hospital and picking idly at a leaf that strained over the fence. He had given his nurse the slip under the pretense of 'exercising' his leg.

"I'm looking forward to getting into some slut's pants more."

The gruff laughter of the ambulance driver was a welcome respite from the faint panic that filled his chest at the thought of the vast, cloudy world that waited for him outside of the four familiar walls of his hospital room.

Had he been the sort of person who reflected on his feelings with the focus of a philosopher, he might have nodded sagely and assured himself that it was perfectly normal to feel this way.

His life, since he had woken from the accident, had been defined by waiting. Waiting until he could get out of bed, waiting to be told the truth, waiting for a treatment, waiting for a visitor, waiting to be given a clean bill of health.

Waiting to see Blair Waldorf, so that he could see whether this time, finally, his heart would stop beating out of hand. Waiting to see that the words Dan Humphrey had told him – about them dating, about them fucking, about them sharing some semblance of a life – had been bullshit.

So far there was no sign of her. Not since he had opened his eyes and spoken in a voice that he didn't recognize: _Hello, beautiful._

There had been no sign of her since she had come to his side in a dress that made his heart beat in the back of his throat. On a _date_. He couldn't even begin to understand why just thinking of her on a date made his stomach churn, underneath his stony outward countenance.

And now, finally, the day had come when he could start living again, and he was sitting in this drab little chair, waiting for Nate to pick him up.

Because he didn't know where he lived.

Of course, Nate was now 20 minutes late and Chuck was starting to feel a little bit like one of those children left at afterschool care whose parents forget to pick them up. He entertained himself by watching the floating dust motes that floated through the air – oddly mournful in the dim, overcast light of what would become a miserable day.

"Not that I want to disturb this pity party," a voice said from the door of the room. "But you realize that you're now staying in the hospital by choice, right?"

Chuck's head jerked up at the sound of her voice. It was Blair Waldorf, looking more energetic and upbeat then she had in weeks. Her curls were held in place by a positively regal headband and her shoes were teetering stilts that lesser women would have broken an ankle in.

She looked so much younger than she had the last time he'd seen her that Chuck felt suddenly extraordinarily self-aware – felt every inch of his nineteen years, and then some. No longer felt like a teenager, but rather like a brittle old person summoning the courage to turn a stubborn tap with arthritic hands.

"You're back," he said simply, his hands curled into fists and pressed onto his knees. His grip on the silver pen was painful – and he knew she could see the white of his knuckles. But, for the first time since he had woken up, she seemed utterly unaffected by the sight of his nervousness. It was hard to say what was different in her gaze. But, if he had been compelled to name it, he would have said that she no longer looked as if she wanted something from him. No longer willed him away, no longer willed him to say words that refused to form.

If it was a mask, it was an exquisitely crafted one. Even though he now knew that he and Blair had been embroiled in some kind of romantic relationship, he found himself more in the dark than ever. Foolish in his expensive pants. Foolish and waiting for someone to lead him home.

"Nate couldn't make it," she said, her china doll lips curled into a half-smile. "He asked me to take you home."

She could not have picked a worse way to phrase it. It was impossible not to shake the feeling that he was the overgrown child of Nate and Blair, to be ferried by one or the other to a soccer game.

"You don't need to waste your energy, Waldorf. Give my driver the address. I'll make my own way."

As always, the words they said out loud were underscored by the unspoken words that both of them shied away from. It was made worse for Chuck, knowing that Blair was more in control than he. She refused to be ruffled, and her new attitude – of controlled distance – was palpable to him. In contrast, he teetered on the precipice of a new life he didn't know at all. The uncertainty made him petulant, but in the deepest recesses of his brain, a feeble voice called out for help.

_I want you to stay. But I will not keep you here. _

"I promised Nate," Blair said simply. "So even if it injures your delicate sensibilities, I'm going to take you home."

_I want you to follow me. But I won't tell you were to go._

Chuck knew the battle was lost. Because, if he was honest with himself, he really didn't want to be left alone.

"Fine," he said with dignity, tucking the pen in his breast pocket. "Lead the way."

Armed with nothing but a suitcase and the one, mysterious date that seemed to represent the start of it all, Chuck Bass followed Blair Waldorf into his new life.

* * *

F.C.A. ¶ 661; [3]

S.C.P.A. ¶¶ 1701 – 1704

….

Proceedings for the Appointment of a

Guardian for Financial and Property Management of

CHARLES BARTHOLOMEW BASS

A Person suffering mental incapacity

….

TO THE FAMILY COURT

The Petitioner respectfully alleges to this Court that:

I am the legal guardian of the person who has suffered mental incapacity and is the subject of this petition and I am submitting this petition in order to be appointed Guardian of the Person.

My name is LILY VAN DER WOODSEN (nee RHODES) and was married to BARTHOLOMEW BASS in 2007. After his death, I became the legal guardian of CHARLES BARTHOLOMEW BASS and have previously taken over Charles Bass's financial affairs with his the express consent (see Attachment 1).

On 15 November 2010, Charles Bass suffered head injuries after a vehicular accident. This injury causes Charles to lose any memory of the years from 2007 to the present day. In effect, he has the mental age of sixteen-year old minor….

* * *

_**29 November, 2010 (9.05pm)**_

_**Justice Joshua Katzmann's Chambers, Family Court, Manhattan**_

The judge's chambers were oddly cold, despite the warm fire that moved in the corner.

Although she tried to concentrate on what was being said, her eyes were continually drawn to the fire – attracted to the vibrancy of it, mindful of the violence that those flames could unleash if they escaped from their confines.

It seemed like such a long time since the judge had spoken that Lily had allowed her mind to wander to other things.

As it had since that night, her mind found itself wondering to Chuck. The last time she had seen him, he had threatened to have her removed by security. What worse things would he say if she succeeded in her quest tonight?

"Mrs. Humphrey," the judge finally spoke, his chin resting in his hands and his glasses perched at the tip of his nose. "I understand the extraordinary nature of this situation, and you have my sympathy. But, to do this now, under the cover of darkness – in my chambers – without Charles present to discuss his situation as he sees it is extremely improper. I don't see how I can accept your request, Mrs. Humphrey."

For the first time since she had explained the situation to him, she turned the entirety of her focus on the judge. It had become predictable, over the years, the way men would react when faced with her beauty in full force. She had often tried to determine what it was in her face – her fairly unremarkable face – that made great men fall to their knees. If it was true that everyone had one special thing about them, surely for Lily it was the ability to make men fall in love with her.

She smiled sadly. "There was a time when you called me Lily, Judge."

He smiled in a way that told her he was out of practice. "You used to call me Joshua." He paused, before looking her straight in the eye. "Bart was a friend. He wouldn't like that I haven't been keeping in contact with you. Keeping an eye of you."

The moment her eyes met his, she knew that he would do anything to protect her, that he wanted desperately to protect her. Even though years of practice in court had given him an exceptional poker face.

"I think that Bart would find quite a few of my decisions questionable," Lily said, surprising herself with her candor. He would have been impressed with how she was playing this night, Lily mused. Bart would have admired the way she exploited his old friendship with Joshua Katzmann.

_What a weapon to have in your arsenal, _Bart had said once, his hand on her chin, moving her face in the light to examine it. _What would men do to see this face? How could men deny such a remote, cruel beauty?_

"But regardless of what he thinks of me," Lily continued, swallowing, "you know how he would feel in this situation. Mentally, Charles is sixteen years old. He has no attachments - "

The Judge chuckled. "I seem to recall that he has attachments to half the escorts in the city."

"My point exactly. Imagine you wake up one day, sixteen again, and find out that your father has died and left you a fortune."

The Judge leaned back in the chair and turned to look at the fire.

"Joshua," Lily said, leaning forward in the chair and touching his hand lightly. The old man jerked and looked down at her perfect white skin against his old hands. "Sign the order tonight and you can review it in a week when Charles has calmed down enough to discuss it with you. Don't sign it, and if I know Charles, he'll be on the first flight out of New York. And everything that Bart worked for, everything that Charles himself has worked for, it will be finished."

_And he will be lost to me. _

It was such an absolute certainty that Lily scarcely even felt a thrill of victory when the Judge signed the petition and slid it across the table to her. With that signature, he had just signed over to her all power over Chuck's assets and property. From now on, whatever he did – whatever he charged to his account at the Empire – she would be signing off on the bill. With that signature, Chuck's hard won independence had been slashed.

With that signature, he had brought her time.

"You have two weeks."

"Thank you."

For a while, both of them sat there in amiable silence, wondering what the ghost of Bart Bass would have to say about their follies.

* * *

_**30 November, 2010 (11.30am)**_

_**The Empire Hotel, New York**_

Chuck had shown her the Empire for the first time with a flourish of his hands and an expansive grin. He had been proud and Blair hadn't had the heart to tell him how dark and threatening she found the place.

It was like stepping into his mind: the red lights of the illuminated sign for the hotel casting an almost seedy light across the bedroom. All red, everything red. It made her miss the way they had stolen moments in her largely blue room in her mother's house.

At that time, in that place, the Empire had seemed as dark and remote as his own mind. She had taken the Alice leap behind his eyes and had been confronted with the creep of varying light, of coagulating dark reds and unwholesome art.[4]

But he had looked around so ravenously – eager to drink in every detail. She had been fascinated by the sight of him looking so excited, embarking upon something terrifying and intimidating. She had pulled off his clothes not because she was excited by the next step, but because she finally had a sense of the scale of the mind she was trying to gain entry to. She finally saw him, the way Bart had left him. She saw him as if through at the end of a long tunnel and she tore off his clothes because she wanted to feel the comfort of his skin pressed against hers, because as long as she could hold on tight, she could find a rebuttal to the meaning she read into the scene of him opening those doors with a showman's flourish and staring wolfishly at his new digs.

She really hated this place.

They had travelled from the car to his front door silently. The hum of the elevator was all that could be heard. Blair noticed, in the sidelong glances she shot towards him, that he had done his hair in the way he used to at school: slightly disheveled, lacking the groomed perfection of his later life.

In fact, he looked much the way he had the first time she told him that she loved him. In the drizzling rain outside his father's wake.

"Here we are," she said unnecessarily, opening the door with the ease of one who was used to the complex bolt. She hoped that Chuck didn't notice the certainty of her hands, turning the keys.

It was a strange sort of role reversal, to open the double doors for him and show him his home, the way he had once done for her.

He took a few uncertain steps into the room: taking in the large artworks, the pool table, the well-stocked bar.

_He must be loving this_, Blair mused, watching his back as he wandered around the living room. Chuck at sixteen would have been even more excited to have a little club-house than Chuck at twenty had been. And at twenty he had loved it enough to – she shook her head, banishing the thought.

She had begun making strides towards the way she had once been, on Nicholas' advice. She had been trying to remember what it had felt like to believe fervently that she was blessed with an inspiration, a will, that would allow her to triumph over her every adversary. So much of that had been because of _him_. And now not even he knew that.

Her telephone buzzed audibly, breaking the silence of the room. She noticed idly that Chuck had yet to progress particularly far.

_I can't stop thinking about you. I'm riding a hard deadline tonight, but have dinner with me tomorrow night? – Nicholas._

He was oddly persistent. But she smiled at the way he evoked their strange, interrupted date of the other night:

"_I haven't been able to stop thinking about you. There's something so elusive about you, Blair Waldorf. What do you do with your days?"_

There was a time when she would have shrugged nonchalantly at that; there was a time when she would have rolled her eyes at the sentiment. Of _course_ he couldn't stop thinking about her; she was Blair Waldorf.

Back when Chuck was a boy donning a bright-orange cravat who had smoked weed on the crosswalk outside school, because he was Chuck Bass and what the hell did he care about whether teachers or students hated him? It was a complex hatred, one that he relished. It was the sort of hatred that caused haters to feel a strange sort of self-hatred for hating someone who scarcely even thought of them. And that tended to make them involuntarily hate him even more; as he stood there, wrapped in his expensive coat, his only concern whether he could buy the answers to his SAT test and where his next drink was coming from.[5]

She loved the picture he cut as he stood there – even before she'd ever associated him with feelings of love. She found him visually pleasing; she found him like a young Gatsby. That was the justification she gave herself when she walked over to him in the school yard. They were aesthetic kindred spirits and he was her boyfriend's best friend.

But in reality, she had loved the way that someone so perfectly bored by everything would find her interesting. She was refreshed by someone paying her the due she was confident she deserved.

"_If you think the rest of us are so humdrum, then what's stopping you from going back to the time when your life looked the way it was supposed to?"_

She was shaken from her reverie by the feeling of eyes on her, and she looked up to find Chuck had turned his back on his hotel and was focusing entirely on her.

"What are you looking at, Bass?" she said, adopting that same petulant voice she'd had in high school.

"Nothing," he scoffed, before looking once more at the walls of the apartment. It could have been her imagination, but he didn't seem particularly interested in exploring the place where he'd lived.

After a few minutes, he glanced at her again. She was about to open her mouth to comment, but before she had the opportunity to, he blurted out what was bothering him.

"Why don't you wear headbands anymore?"

Blair shook her head incredulously, unconsciously reaching up to adjust her curls. "That's the question you want to ask me?"

He chuckled at her rudeness. He had always enjoyed her bitchiness. "They were always your crown. And…" he peered at her through his eyelashes. "You looked hot in them."

It was possibly the most immature way he could have put it, but in spite of herself, she felt his heart contract with his clumsy compliment. Suddenly, the Empire didn't seem like a threatening extension of its owner; this Chuck may have been hurt by years of neglect, but he had not suffered the trauma of seeing his father in hospital, of an Uncle who hated him for no reason other than that some streaks of cruelty are hereditary, of a fake mother, of a disappointing attempt at a family, of a rejection from the only girl he'd ever had feelings for.

And this Chuck was only pretending to be calm, while really trying to estimate whether she would rip out his lungs for saying something so audacious to her.

"I looked _hot_?" she said, one eyebrow raised.

"Yeah," he said with a shrug. "I mean, you would have looked hotter if that were the only thing you were wearing..."

"You are such a skeeze," she said flippantly.

And then it had hit her: they were interacting like they had back before everything went to hell. The thought thrilled and terrified her. For the first time, his memory loss appeared as a blessing, rather than a curse. She found herself shifting slightly, watching his eyes travelling down her leg as she fully committed to entering the room and perched on one of his bar stools. She watched as his eyes followed the way her legs crossed and re-crossed on the stool.

He straightened his shoulders and walked to the kitchen, a look of strange uncertainty on his face as he walked up to a particular cupboard and found it well-stocked with different spirits. He allowed himself a small smile of victory before placing two glasses on the bench: a glass of scotch for him and a gin martini for her.

Blair frowned briefly at the way he had known her favourite drink; the complex mystery of those things that were conscious memory and those things that nestled somewhere in his unconscious was not something that should be fathomed when you were starting drinking this early.

"It's early to be drinking," she commented as she accepted her drink.

"It's noon," he shrugged. "And I don't seem to have anything else to do."

She shrugged, taking a sip as he came to sit on the stool next to her – it was slightly more of an effort these days with his cast. But he angled his body to face hers as she spoke. "I wish I could say the same. But, Eleanor's show is soon and the house is a mess."

"You love it," he said smoothly, sipping his own drink and stealing sidelong glances at her face.

"I'm looking forward to her clearing out again at the end of the week."

"Where's she off to?"

"She lives in Paris," Blair shrugged, swallowing one of the olives, before looking up to find his face posed in rapturous focus. She was suddenly uncomfortable with his scrutiny. She bit her lip and noticed that his eyes had trailed down her face to her lips. "Don't you want to look at the rest of your house?"

He cut his gaze away. "I can look around later." He shrugged. "It doesn't really feel like my house. It just feels like a hotel."

"That's what I always thought," she said sadly, before downing the rest of her drink and standing up. "I should go."

He seemed taken aback, and his voice was oddly needy when he spoke. "Where are you going?"

She stopped to look at him. "I have to get back to my life. And you probably have a lot of Googling to do."

"What do you mean?" he said innocently, still standing to block her path to the door. Trying to create the illusion of distance between them, she pressed her back to the bar. But, she had forgotten who she was dealing with. The illusion of distance wouldn't last for long.

"Don't play innocent with me, Chuck," she said softly, trying to ignore how close he was standing and the way he smelled and the tired shadows under his eyes that made her want to lead him to bed to watch him while he slept. "You're home now. Nate can't stop you from finding out about your life now."

"It's not the same," he said, lowering his head slightly. The sound of his forlorn voice made her body pull away from the bar slightly, entering the space that was warm with his body heat. She knew, suddenly, that within a few minutes of her leaving he would go to the computer, type in his name and see at least some of it: he would see their pictures from the society pages. It would be impossible to hide. A part of her would have liked to tell him herself. But the moment she did, the illusion would be shattered, and things would change.

_Walk away,_ she willed herself. But, it was impossible.

"What isn't the same?" she whispered, now only a few centimeters away from him. She wondered why he wasn't pulling away, she wondered why he wasn't running for the hills, with her almost nuzzling his neck. Although they weren't touching yet, she could feel that the same force was holding him in place; they were magnetic always had been.

"What I find on the Internet," he said, his voice catching and his breathing ragged. "It may tell me what, but it won't tell me why."

"Why what?" she breathed.

His hands hovered just over her skin, as if he was too scared to actually touch her bare arms.

"Why you let me stand this close to you," his fingers finally lightly brushing her skin, like a ghost, like a touchable dream.[6] "Why you let me do _this_."

At the word '_this_' he pressed his lips against hers, still more gentle than she had remembered: as gentle as that first kiss in the back of his limousine. So many of their kisses since then had been ragged, passionate, raw and longing. But this kiss was as innocent as the first blink of a child. It surprised both of them. All conversation was forgotten in the intensity of the feeling that came over them at the feeling of their hands on each other. It was a single, perfectly innocent moment of awakening that shook both of them to the foundation.

But it could never last for long; not when it came to them. The gentleness gave way to ferocity within a few minutes.

Within an instant, she was pressed flush against him and his hands were lodged in her curls and she couldn't remember to be annoyed at him for messing up her hair. He kissed her so hard that she imagined her mouth might be bruised, but she knew that she kissed _him _even harder. His heart was thundering against his chest – in perfect synchronicity with hers – and for a moment the world tipped on itself, until she felt his hands slide under her blouse, and heard his breathing hitch at the feel of the skin that he couldn't remember ever having running his hands over.

Lost in the moment, she planted her palm flat against his chest, before sliding it down his stomach, pausing above his belt to pull back and look at his face.

His eyes were wild and his skin oddly white. He looked so utterly out of control that she was scared for him. He couldn't make sense of any of it – of the intensity of the feelings between them, of the way his body responded to her. It was mystifying and terrible and he looked winded by the sheer thought of it.

"Blair," he rasped. "Blair."

He didn't seem capable of saying anything else, so he pulled her to his mouth again, his hands struggling to cover more and more of her skin.

She was better placed than him to know it what it felt like to be with him. But even as she lost herself once more in his kiss, the look of his aroused, terrified eyes filled her mind. There was something about the franticness of his touch that made her pause; it was as if by shedding their clothes, he expected to unlock the riddle of his past. He was holding onto her for dear life.

And she could give into him, and pretend that they were still what they had once been. She could give him everything she had to give because he asked for it. But it still wouldn't be enough. And then she'd have nothing left to offer him.

She pulled back, using all the strength in her arms to push him away. With a new found composure, she pressed her hands against his cheeks and watched as the colour returned to his face and a look of confusion overtook him.

"What's wrong?" he asked, uncomprehending and trying to catch his breath.

"We shouldn't do this," she said gently, kissing him once more on the lips before pulling away and tucking her blouse back into her skirt.

"I don't understand," Chuck said, running a frustrated hand through his hair. "I thought we were…you know…_together._"

_I thought we were…you know…together._

The moment of revelation came swiftly and cruelly as Blair watched his confused face and the sharp, jagged motions of his hand at his side. For some reason, the image of him standing there, struggling so intensely with making sense of the nature of their relationship reminded Blair of an infant. The red-faced frustration reminded her of a child on the verge of speaking, who knows what they want and just don't quite know how to ask for it.

For her part, she wanted to know how he had found out. But, for the moment it didn't seem to matter much. So what if it were Nate, Serena or even Dan Humphrey? He would have found out the moment he had access to wifi anyway. He could never stand not to know. But he was right; nothing he found would tell him why because nothing he found would show him what they had been to each other. He might suspect, but the only way to know for sure was to live it.

The thought saddened her, and when she spoke her voice was unusually grave. "You don't have the slightest idea what that even means, Chuck."

She couldn't bear to be in this room with him any longer, so she hurried to the exit, eager to get away from the scene.

"Then explain it to me," he called after her. "Explain what this is."

She paused at the door, looking back at him looking unspeakable small and lonely in his grand apartment.

"_This_ is over," she said simply.

The words wounded him and he didn't know why. "Then tell me what this _was_."

She opened the door and slipped out. But at the last moment, she seemed to have a change of heart and stuck her head back in.

"You want to know what this was? Look on your computer at the file marked '_Viewing Organic Solvent Solidify_.'"

"What are you talking about?" he asked, confused.

"Watching paint dry," she said, almost smiling. "It was the most boring name we could come up with. The password is 111707. Maybe then you'll start to understand. And stop trying to find out."

As the door closed behind her, Chuck looked around the large, empty cavern that his 20-year old self had chosen out of all the amazing real estate in New York.

He couldn't have known it, feeling desolate and more than a little horny. But, he was also the way he had always liked to be.

Alone.

* * *

_**30 November, 2010 (4.30pm)**_

_**The Empire Hotel, New York**_[7]

When Nate got home from university, the Empire was quiet and brooding in the late afternoon light.

"Chuck?" Nate called. "Are you here buddy?"

He fancied he could hear noises coming from the living room, and at the sound of glass tapping against a table top, he knew that Chuck was indeed at home.

"Sorry I couldn't pick you up man," Nate continued talking as he threw his lacrosse gear on the floor. "I thought the teachers at college were meant to be more relaxed than the ones at school. But if anything they're worse. It's like, dude – it's not my job to be here. That's yours. You know what I - "

The words died on his lips; there on the couch was Chuck Bass as he had seen him many times before: completely wasted and lost in thought.

The only difference was this time he had a laptop perched on his lap, his eyes glued to the screen and his finger poised in a way that told Nate that whatever he was watching he had watched a hundred times before.

"How long have you been sitting here?" Nate asked gently.

"I don't remember," Chuck said flatly.

_Because I love you._

The moment the words came out, Chuck swallowed and pressed a button. Nate realized suddenly that he had to be watching a video.

_Chuck – I'm trying to get ready!_

Nate frowned, before moving behind Chuck's shoulder so that he could see the video that filled the screen of Chuck's laptop. (The laptop! Nate mentally slapped himself on the forehead. So much for Blair-proofing the house).

There, filling the screen, was Blair Waldorf.

Out of sheer habit, Nate cut away his eyes – convinced that he was about to inadvertently watch a sex tape of his ex girlfriend and his best friend. But, when he heard Chuck laugh – that _real_ laugh that only Blair could get out of him - he looked at the screen again.

It was in her bedroom, she was sitting at her make-up table, wearing one of her lacy baby-dolls, but otherwise fairly decent.

_You can't improve on perfection_, came Chuck's disembodied voice from the video. _You'll be the most beautiful woman there, no matter whether or not you do your hair._

_I am trying to get ready for __**your**__ gala_, Blair chastised, but Nate could see that she was trying to hide a grin as she put her earrings in and Chuck placed the video camera on the table, next to her necklace. He had angled the camera towards the mirror so they were both in frame, reflected in the silver glass. _I don't have time to make a sex tape with you._

_There's always time for a sex tape._

Nate stole a glance at Chuck, wondering what he made of the scene as he sipped his scotch. He shouldn't have been surprised, really, that Chuck had kept this video as a morbid reminder of when they had been happy. But, the Chuck that sat on the couch now had never been this happy; had never even come close. And the Chuck on the screen positively exuded happiness and serenity as he ducked down and wrapped his arms around her waist.

_Make yourself useful and do up my necklace,_ she said, her smile blunting the force of her words.

With an exultant look on his face, Chuck lifted her hair from her neck, doing up the butterfly necklace that Nate recognized as one of her favorites. Once her necklace was secure, Chuck kissed the back of her neck, and she turned her head to capture his lips with hers.

_We're going to be late,_ she said, her will to get ready slipping away.

_I don't care,_ Chuck said, reaching out to slip her silky robe from her shoulders.

Nate prepared once more to cut his eyes away, but to his surprise, Chuck himself turned the video camera away, so that all could be seen was shadows on the wall.

_For my eyes only, _he said.

_Why is that?_ Blair asked, between the sound of frantic kisses and ragged breathing.

_Because I love you_.

Once more, Chuck pressed a button on his computer, rewinding the video to the beginning.

"How many times have you watched this?" Nate asked.

"I don't know."

"Chuck - " Nate said, not certain what else he could say to remove the heartbreaking look on Chuck's face. It was as if he had his nose pressed to a window, looking into a past – or a future – that could never be his. Neither of them could tear their eyes away from the screen. "We didn't want to tell you. We didn't know how you'd take it."

"Turns out you didn't have to," Chuck said. "Tell me, that is. Dan Humphrey took care of that for you."

_Make yourself useful and do up my necklace. We're going to be late._

_I don't care._

"You should stop watching that," Nate said, ignoring the fact that he was now hypnotized by the couple that filled the screen.

"Why?" Chuck asked ironically, swilling his drink. "It's my memory, isn't it?"

"You shouldn't be drinking alone," Nate said, searching for an excuse to close the laptop and save Chuck from himself.

"Then poor yourself a glass."

Shrugging, Nate did what he said and, not quite knowing what else to do, sat down on the couch next to his best friend, whose face was oddly illuminated by the glow of the computer screen.

_For my eyes only._

_Why is that?_

_Because I love you._

It took a moment for Nate to make sense of the sound he was hearing – until he saw Chuck brush angrily at his eyes, wiping away tears he didn't understand. Not quite knowing what to do, Nate squeezed Chuck's knee and sat by him as he shed tears for everything he'd lost.

* * *

[1] WH Auden, "Epitaph on a Tyrant"

[2] Based on Victoria in _How I met your mother._

[3] I took some liberties with the guardianship form and the way guardianship proceedings would go in New York. Apologies for any annoying inaccuracies.

[4] Based on the poem, "If My Darling" by Philip Larkin.

[5] Based on a passage in David Foster Wallace's _The Pale King._

[6] Carol Ann Duffy, "You".

[7] This scene is inspired by _Weeds_, episode 1.06, where Nancy watches a video of Judah. You can find it on YouTube. The song in the background is "Ballerina" by Leona Naess.

A/N: I'm a bit rusty! I hope this was okay! Hopefully it won't be as long between drinks next time. I'm also keen to do a new chapter of "Lightness and Weight".


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